We talk to a lot of people looking to get their first website up and running. Many of them don’t know much about websites except that they need one. This is completely understandable as there is a lot to creating a website. So what should a website virgin be on the look out for?
A designer should design your website – simple, right? Not quite. There are many different kinds of designers and I don’t mean in terms of style. The two main designer types I am referring to are graphic designers and web designers. While many people think that a graphic designer can handle anything involving digital aesthetic from business cards to websites, this isn’t always the case. While the goal here is not to say graphic designers are useless, designing for the web is a completely different beast than designing for print.
A very common response I get from clients when I show them the initial design concept for their new website is, “Why is there so much extra space on the sides. Can we get rid of that and use all the space?”
Designing for the web has a lot more restrictions than some other design media such as print. With print, you know how a person will be viewing your final piece. With a website, you don’t know what kind of computer, operating system, browser and screen resolution a person is using – each one of these variables could affect how the website is displayed to the end user. These days, we have figured out most of the quirks and differences between operating systems and browsers and how to overcome them. When it comes to screen resolution though, we have to make concessions.