Web design is the process of designing websites. It is a collection of online content including documents and applicants that reside on a web server. Creative web design is the creation of web pages and sites using HTML, CSS, Java script, and other web languages. Web design is just like a design in general. It is the combination of lines, shapes, texture, and color to create an aesthetically pleasing or striking look. Web design is the work of creating web designs for web pages.
The word design means a lot of different things to different people. But nearly everyone you meet says that it is obvious what design is. They are often surprised to find that other people mean something different by design then they do.
The goal of most web designers is to create an attractive, easily accessible and functional website that will convince the visitor to do something. Creating such a creative web design requires good graphic design, easy and intuitive site navigation, logical site layout and good web copy. There are few guidelines for a creative web design. These guidelines are as follows:
- Web content – you want a visitor to see you as a knowledgeable information source or a reputable business. Poor grammar and spelling mistakes will immediately reduce your credibility. Remember that people use the internet to find information. Whether you are selling your own product or recommending someone else’s products, you must first provide valuable information to the visitor or they will click away and find a website that gives them what they want
- Cross browser compatibility – there are at least a hundred different browsers in use. You must design your website to work properly in the most widely used web browser. To do that you may not be able to use all of the really great special effects those are available because that may not be supported in most browsers. Even though most web browsers are free, people do not necessary to upgrade to the latest version. The average surfer may not know how to upgrade their browsers or have the attitude. Creative web design requires your web pages to work in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera and Safari at a minimum.
- Graphics and photos – web surfers are impatient and studies show that most people will click away if a webpage takes longer than 10 seconds to load. Always optimize your photos and other graphic files to have as small a size as possible without sacrificing picture quality. Always use the height and width attributes on the picture so the rest of the page can load while the graphics file is downloading.
- Background colors – if you use anything other than white behind text, be sure to specify link colors otherwise the user’s browser default will determine what color the links are which can make them unreadable.
Multimedia – multimedia is composed of flash movies, video clips, audio clips and background music. Always use streaming media because it reduces download time.