Web Design Vs Graphic Design - Make Sure You Engage the Right Designer!

Designers are not all created equal...some designers are excellent at logos, others at websites and some are all-rounders. It's important that when you are having your website designed that you use a designer who is experienced at designing for the web and understands modern trends and best practices. Designing for the web is very different to designing for print media (i.e. brochures, business cards, flyers etc.) as you need to consider things like usability, adapting to multiple screen sizes and consistency across a huge number of devices and browsers. I'll elaborate on these important areas a little more below:

Usability

Having a beautiful website is useless if it's not functional and designed to provide a great user experience. Your website needs to present your content to your users as quickly and easily as possible and lead them on a journey with the final destination being your conversion goal. Buttons need to be easily clickable and distinguishable as buttons that lead to additional content. A strong user experience strategy is the most important part of the website design so it's important to plan your designs and create wireframes for each of the key layouts before diving straight into the design.

Multiple Screen Sizes

Print media is designed for one set size and doesn't need to adapt based on how/where the user is looking at it. With the web however, users can be on an almost never ending size of devices and your website needs to display well on all of them. It's important to consider how each element will respond and display for each screen size. Knowing how to design a great, responsive website is one of the major differences between print and web design.

Browser & Device Consistency

Not only do we need to consider the vast array of screen sizes, we also need to consider all of the devices and browsers that users have access to. Each browser can display things in different ways and it's important to consider this when designing your website. To maximise conversions from your website it needs to work for all users regardless of their device or browser.

Selecting a designer who isn't experienced in designing for the web generally results in a poorly designed website that won't be optimised for conversions. If you're unsure whether the designer you are considering for your project is the right fit then just ask to see a recent portfolio of their work. This should give you a fairly good idea of the type of work they will produce.