Why You Need a UX Designer

By creating a flawless user experience and a pleasant visual design, web design agencies can boost your performance and give your startup a perfect start. The benefits you get from the right design justify the investments:

1. Cost savings. The cost of fixing an error at the design stage is tens or even hundreds of times less than at the development stage.
2. Faster launch. The point of UX design is to get product structure and design for development and eliminate all blockers that might appear on the way.
3. Systematic promotion. Thanks to UX design all promotional items are in one style, and developers have clear instructions to follow that style; thus, advertisements and campaigns work better.
4. Engaging user experience. All user paths are designed to convey the company’s main message and help users achieve their goals.

What a UX Designer Does

Here we come to the most exciting part — the role of the UX designer, the responsibilities they take on, and the results for your startup.

Market Research

The first thing the UX designer must do is conduct research. Designers have to study the target market, audience, and competitors to find the right needs to address and come up with ideas to make the product useful and profitable. During market research, a web design company or a designer from your internal team gathers quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data includes the number of interested users, the size of the market, and other statistics. Qualitative data refers to deeper issues like what problems people face or what goals they want to achieve. After conducting research, the UX designer should have a clear idea of what the product should be and what features it should include. This is the starting point for developing any product.

User Personas

Data gathered during market research is then used to build buyer personas. In buyer personas, designers describe typical users of the product with particular needs and goals. Creating personas helps UX designers better understand users and thus make the product and thus make the product better meet their needs. When you know who’s going to use your product and how and why they will do so, you can prepare all users’ paths without missing any steps.

Information Architecture

The next step is creating the information architecture. At this stage, UX designers structure all of the website’s or app’s data and features in a way that’s convenient for users to navigate. This process might require additional research. As a result, designers deliver a site map with a clear structure that is intuitive and convenient for all users.

Wireframing

After the sitemap is ready, UX designers create a wireframe of the app, or a low-detail prototype showing what should be located where on each screen. The point is to depict the main features and all the user’s paths but not yet pay attention to the product’s visual identity. At this step, you must approve and validate the wireframe created by designers before moving forward. It’s convenient for stakeholders to check on the features and navigation of the product before there are many detailed elements, pictures, and animations that can distract from the focal point.

Prototyping

Now it’s time to take the wireframe to the next level by building a prototype and bringing it alive. A prototype still lacks color and design features, but in addition to focusing on functionality, it allows you to click, scroll, and navigate. Thus, you can get the real experience of using the product before developing it and explore every user path to ensure it isn’t missing any steps.

A prototype is a perfect artifact for testing your product before you invest a lot of time and money. Stakeholders can give their feedback on your prototype, and UX designers can make all necessary improvements.

UI Design

User interface design is another web design service, and it’s mostly carried out by the same designer who is responsible for the UX design. However, this differs from vendor to vendor.

After the prototype is approved, designers can move to create the product’s look and feel. The aim is to create a design that will distinguish the product from competitors and convey the company’s values to the customer. The challenge is to follow the company’s style guidelines, though sometimes there’s no brand identity yet, so it falls to the UI/UX designer to create one. When the user interface design is ready, the designer creates a guide for developers to follow.

Usability Testing

The last step and the last responsibility of a UX designer are testing the design. The goal here is to ensure that the design fulfills all the customers’ and stakeholders’ needs. As a rule, usability testing is conducted by the development team or the product owner’s team, but engaging users is also possible and gives the most relevant results. Designers choose a usability testing method according to the product and its peculiarities. In the image below, you can see possible options.

UX Designer Role – Summing up

UX design helps to ensure that your product will meet its audience’s needs and benefit both users and stakeholders. It is one of the first stages of product development and ensures that the product has all the demanded features and provides a smooth user experience.

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Who Is a Web Designer?

Before we go deeper into the issues of where you can learn web design, consider the meaning of the existence of this profession. Web design is a type of design and a branch of web development. Web-designer – a specialist responsible for how a particular site is perceived and displayed on the Internet. Using computer technology, he creates and handles the elements of graphics, comes up with logos, banners, develops the structure and navigation of the site.

Thus, the scope of competence of a typical web designer can be divided into programmatic, visual, and style components. This is the organization of electronic information and its pleasant design, the development of interfaces for websites and applications, the creation of amazing graphics that serve the main tasks of the site and the needs of the target audience. To create compelling websites or the best networking presentation, a web designer works closely with brand managers, web programmers, layout designers, marketing specialists, and SEO web promotion specialists.

A good web designer – a specialist who knows how to work with graphics editors and has good artistic taste. A great designer is both a talented artist, an intuitive psychologist, and a strong technical expert.

Become a Web Designer – Essential Knowledge and Skills

A good craftsman should make a functional website that will be convenient for visitors to use. For this reason, he must have the following skills and knowledge:

• knowledge and capabilities in working with typography, colors, and other structural design elements;
• make user-friendly functionality, think through UI/UX;
• know how to work with essential tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Corel DRAW, and others. In addition, knowledge of the programs GIF Animator, FineReader is welcome. This list is not complete, as in the process of work may need other specialized programs;
• be competent in specifics of work with the layout in HTML and CSS;
• competently prepare design layouts before sending them to the layout designer;
• be able to intelligently design advertising, know how best to attract potential customers, and have the marketing competencies to ensure effective sales or other important goals;
• have an individual, good taste, sense of style;
• process images based on a predetermined model through the use of special programs.

Become a Web Designer – Individual Qualities

In addition to the necessary skills to perform certain types of work, a web designer must have qualities important to his profession. Let’s list the basic ones:

• communication skills: be able to express thoughts, work in a team, work with clients, focus on their needs, find an approach to everyone;
• curiosity: to find uncommon solutions, to look for different ways of solving tasks within one job
• analytical skills: to plan all the stages of the work, to analyze, structure, determine the steps and their sequence to get the best result
• diligence: to work on the task without the distraction of the social networks, messengers;
• assiduity: to work on the task for a long time, not devoting much time to rest and “smoke breaks
• responsibility: understand the importance of meeting deadlines and the timeliness of reporting to the customer of the service;
• imagination: to imagine the result – the final look of the site or page after all stages of work.

An essential thing in the work of a web designer should be considered a sense of taste. However, you should not think that taste – it is an innate quality. It develops gradually, in which a significant role is played by self-development. For this reason, it is vital to work on yourself.

6 Ways to Become a Web Designer: Online, Free, and Paid

Watch videos on YouTube, take Photoshop lessons or still enroll in a specialty at a university? Learn how to become a web designer when everything is developing rapidly.

Option 1: Online University

Enroll in an online university majoring in “web design” or “graphic design” and take several years to receive a traditional online education, aside from special subjects, brand design, interface design, web design, animation, and analytics. It may even seem like a plus. Only there’s a nuance.

Pros:

• You can study at a convenient time (if deadlines are not tight).
• Diploma of state standard.

Cons:

Even in long courses, all the best teachers from the best studios in the country and the world do not teach. This is just private practice, like everywhere else.

Option 2. Self-education

The most challenging way. To move forward on it, you must first find the process of a web designer and then, for each stage of work to find a selection of books and videos, as well as intermediate product samples.

Pros:

• You can learn at your convenience.
• Almost everything can be found for free.
• International outlook on theory, ready-made design solutions, and a good bar.

Cons:

• The path will require considerable experimentation, time, persistence, passion, and the will to win.
• You need to find a project and a mentor on your own. Otherwise, everything you learn may not add up to a coherent picture.
• There is a risk of not picking the best agencies.

Option 3. Online Courses

An excellent option to start is if you carefully study the teachers, their work, and their approach. Take a free piece and then decide.

Pros:

• You can study at a convenient time.
• You can buy courses in installments.

Cons:

• Most likely, another series of courses will be required.
• Sometimes you come across expensive trajectories with an emphasis on tools, not projects and skills.

Option 4: Online MasterClass Courses and Workshops

This approach is good for sharing experiences. You get the essentials right away, dive into the project, and start doing and adjusting with feedback. Then, the mentor parses the work and recommends what the participant should work through on his own. This is the same as when preparing a research paper. Of course, you can ask someone to write my research paper for me, but working with a mentor is invaluable. He will help the investigators with the structure, literature search, and general outline of the work. Such cooperation will only bring positive results.

Pros:

• The program contains relevant and applied information.
• You learn how to solve problems close to reality.

Cons:

High cost of working with a mentor.

Option 5: Freelance

There are a lot of clients in the marketplace who need help—ideal for work and training.

Pros:

• Opportunity to get an actual case study in your portfolio.
• You can try anything you want.

Cons:

• You may have to work nights and weekends to meet deadlines (combined with your main job).
• You set your standards, set the bar yourself. In the end, quality can suffer.

Option 6: A Balanced Approach

You practice in the tools on combat projects. Then build up your horizons and courage through a series of short courses from well-known design agencies and companies. And pack a portfolio. And then start submitting applications for test assignments, attaching portfolios and logos of agencies where you studied (will show your serious attitude).

Pros:

• You can study at a convenient time.
• You are guaranteed to learn from experienced experts and studios in the country and get an outlook on practice.
• International outlook on theory, ready-made design solutions, and an excellent global bar.
• Gain only relevant and applied information.
• Learn how to solve problems close to reality.
• Get serious pre-conditioning before the fight.
• Gather a diverse portfolio (with status studio logos) and show a severe attitude before going in for a test assignment and project.
• Get more combat experience for less time and money.
• You can buy everything inexpensively.

Cons:

• You need to do scouting experts and companies to learn from and plan your development.
• You won’t get a state diploma and an international degree.

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Overcome A Creative Block – Detox

Designers these days spend all of their time drawing on electronic screens with a stylus. While convenient, something gets lost in the creative process. Feeling the scratch of pencil, pen, or brush on paper or canvas stimulates creative sections of the mind, and it’s surprising how often creative juices flow. If you’re ever stuck on a project, step away from the screen and put pencil or your instrument of choice to paper. Get drawing or painting. Our digital worlds are full of distractions, and they can contribute to creative blocks. Stepping away from everything and getting back to basics, the thing that you love doing in the first place will help you view objects differently.

Sketching and painting require you to view objects differently since there are no digital tools to help you resize or modify your creation. It forces your brain to think about what you’re doing. The result is some much-needed downtime while stimulating the creative centers of your mind.

Stop Forcing it

Creativity can’t be forced, as you probably know by now. While it’s impossible to say where creative inspiration comes from, it definitely doesn’t come from staring at a blank piece of paper hoping something emanates. To be creative, you need to take a step back and reevaluate everything. Look at your work with fresh eyes.

Perhaps you chose the wrong template, to begin with? When designing a new website, accessing a wide range of templates is essential since it makes your job that much easier. Instead of looking at this as a task that rips apart what you’ve done, think of it as a reevaluation. You can only make things better by looking at everything you did with fresh eyes. If creativity still doesn’t strike, walk away and return to your project later. It’s not as if your project will disappear. Take some time to step away, seek some inspiration, and return when the time feels right.

Overcome A Creative Block – Find New Sources of Inspiration

Diversity is a designer’s best friend. The more vast your inspiration field is, the better your designs will be. Make it a point to explore as many different artistic styles as possible. A good exercise to undertake is to replicate the work of an artist you admire. It doesn’t have to be a famous artist, it can even be a recreation of a website whose design you admire. Recreating the design gives you a chance to view the solution while running into problems. It shortcuts the solution discovery process and gives your brain insights into how problems were solved. You might even end up discovering a better solution to those problems.

Designers who undertake a lot of work can benefit from automating much of their process too. A lot of time can be lost recreating similar elements for clients, repeatedly. Instead, using a feature like Elementor’s Full Website Kits can eliminate the time you spend on repetitive work and force you to focus on creative work that makes a difference. Manage your time well and explore different artistic styles. Your work will mature as you grow, and you’ll discover new boundaries to push.

Break it Down

Often, a creative block is an indication that the task facing you is too large for your brain to comprehend. You might simply not know where to begin. In such situations, it’s best to break the task down into smaller chunks and tackle them one by one. Reducing the size of the problem forces your brain to look at smaller situations and figure out smaller solutions. This process is far more manageable, and it reduces the load on your brain. The result is small bursts of creativity that can get you some creative traction to tackle bigger issues, such as larger trends dominating your niche.

Do Something Monotonous

Often, our brains become exhausted, and we need a complete break from anything creative. Think of it as relaxing completely after a visit to the gym. Everyone needs a break once in a while, and your brain is no different. Doing something that requires little brainpower, such as washing the dishes, brushing your teeth, or doing the laundry will keep your brain occupied and allow it to refresh itself. When the time is right, you’ll feel the urge to get back to designing, and the ideas will flow.

Overcome A Creative Block – Many Ways, One Goal

Every designer’s goal is to create something spectacular. Creativity can be a tough thing to handle but with these tips, you’ll have a better handle on how it comes and goes. Over time, you’ll discover what works for you best and will end up managing designer blocks well.

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Why Is It Important for Designers and Developers to Collaborate?

Designers and developers have equal influence when it comes to creating fantastic products. Understanding what each performs will help you understand why they need to work together. Designers are responsible for the aesthetics, practicality, and usefulness of a product. Designers also consider the target audience’s unique demands and seek methods to make the product more enjoyable, productive, or unique for them. To put it another way, they consider every element of the user experience.

Developers add a distinct set of abilities to the table. Consider a programmer with a keen eye for design. They’re in charge of ensuring that the website or app accomplishes exactly what the user expects. Developers know what can and can’t be coded, and they build the foundation of a product. It should go without saying that designers and developers have the same goal in mind: to produce a fantastic product. The design and development teams just interpret and approach these identical goals in different ways.  There are a few ways to bridge the gap between designers and developers, and they are listed below.

Motivate Them to Find out More about Each Other’s Jobs

Let’s be honest. Developers and designers aren’t always aware of or understand what others do. Each person may believe that their work is more difficult or even overlooked. And both might be correct. Start changing up things with meetings to prevent this. Invite developers to your next design review to observe what goes into the design and the procedures that take place even before the design is sent to development for coding.

Also, designers might attend a developer’s weekly meeting to observe what they’re working on right now. A designer could be willing to share lessons learned from previous projects or current trends with a developer.

Designer-Developer Collaboration – Improve the Communication Between Them

Your designers and developers must be able to communicate easily with one another. Before, there were few options for improving team communication. You would have them share a workstation or create a social media group for everyone.

Even if your teams are working remotely, you can use today’s solutions to increase communication and cooperation. Enterprise VoIP Solution is one of the finest choices. The more simple communication gets, the more probable your team members will communicate with one another. Give them the resources they need to remain in touch and form professional connections.

Organize Brainstorming Sessions

Too frequently, team members are kept out of crucial brainstorming meetings. The project leader could consider inviting the head of the development team to discuss the obstacles of adding specific features to a product. Increase the number of designers and developers in brainstorming meetings to promote teamwork, discuss ideas, and uncover creative solutions that might otherwise go unnoticed if everyone wasn’t there.

Designer-Developer Collaboration – It Can Be Helpful to Be Informal

In order to preserve a good atmosphere, the adoption of formal procedures may need the use of informal interactions as well. Both sides must be more tolerant, compassionate, sympathetic, and nice to one another because they are in this together. Relaxing and entertaining calls should be scheduled to discuss anything other than the project. The teams may play video games and engage in enjoyable online activities, which helps them bond and strengthen their relations.

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Develop a Good Reputation

You are going to struggle to start off a graphic design business in the first place unless you are able to show off your work. For this reason, a lot of people start off in a freelance capacity before gradually building up to taking the business full-time. In California, there are plenty of companies that could utilize your services. Therefore, this is a good opportunity to start to develop your niche. While your ultimate ambition may be to work with a major company like Google or Facebook, this is inevitably going to take a lot of time and effort. You are going to need to cut your teeth in the world of design first and show that you are able to do the job well. Not only this, but you need to develop a reputation for reliability and deliver great results on time, every time.

Set Your Branding and Website

Obviously, if you are going to be running a design business, it is inevitably the case that you need to have a beautifully branded logo, color scheme, etc. Not only this, but you also need a website that is all singing and all dancing. This is likely to be the first impression that potential clients form of your company, so you need to make sure that you are doing it in the right way. Of course, when in California, there are also plenty of business-focused events on offer. Therefore, you need to produce a range of business-focused marketing materials that you are able to distribute to leave a good impression a long time into the future.

How to Start a Design Business – Start on the SEO

As so many people search for products and services online these days, it makes sense that your business is as searchable as it possibly can be. A big part of SEO activities should be dedicated to attracting local traffic. This means that you are regularly including California in your search terms. However, when you are first starting out, you may even want to be more localized than this. Therefore, think about being more specific with the name of your town or your region. Remember, SEO is an ongoing battle, and you cannot expect to get brilliant results overnight. It is going to take time to reach the level that you would like to.

Think About Your Price Structure

You next have the task of charging clients to cover off. This means thinking about whether you would like to charge them by the hour or based on the project completion. It also means that you are going to need to compare and contrast what you are offering with other local enterprises. If you are going to position your price point a long way above them, you need to have a clear justification as to why this is the case. At the same time, you do not want to undersell yourself. As California is clearly such a creative hub, it may well be that you want to charge more than you would in another part of the country.

Set Your Business Up for Success

Beyond the obvious skill that you need in the field of design, you also need to be prepared to set your business up for success in other areas. It means that you set up your business to be tax compliant to ensure that you are not going to be hit with a huge bill further down the line. It also means that you should make sure that you get the proper legal advice to ensure that you are compliant. You should also look into how you can get business coverage in California. This way, if you need it, you have it to rely upon. Of course, another central aspect is ensuring that you have a solid business plan that you can follow through as closely as possible and some market research that shows clearly when and where you are going to position yourself on the market.

How to Start a Design Business – Chase Up Your Payments

When you start to produce work for people, it is essential that you make sure that you get paid. Otherwise, you are not managing your cash flow situation properly. In a new business, this can be extremely damaging, and you can easily find yourself in a situation when you are not able to sustain yourself. Making sure that you work with people who are reliable is an important starting point. Also, some businesses find that they are better able to encourage people to pay on time by giving them an incentive such as a reduced payment or a discount on their next order.

Build Up a Referral System

It is important that you are able to spread your good name as widely as possible. One central way of doing this is by coming up with a referral system. This way, you are incentivizing people to pass your details onto others. Hopefully, once you get the ball rolling, you are then going to be able to spread a referral code from one person to the next.

How to Start a Design Business – Keep Innovating

When you live in a highly innovative environment such as California, you need to make sure that you are constantly innovating and coming up with new ways of doing things. This way, you are going to be able to stand out from the crowd rather than producing the same thing over and over again. Of course, when you are setting up a graphic design business in California, you are going to have your work cut out, but these are some of the ways of achieving success.

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Overcoming Designer’s Block – Relax, Relax, Relax…

It surely sounds useless at first, but relaxing is the first step towards thinking the way you would want. You can’t focus on the positive aspect of something if both your body and mind are tense. In other words, you feel anxious and nervous, which will automatically lead to making mistakes and becoming afraid. Therefore, start to relax by taking deep breaths each day before going out, for instance. Repeat the process as often as possible. It will release you of a lot of tension. There are countless other ways to relax – listening to music, going for a walk, meeting a friend, and so on. Just relax in your own way at least a few minutes per day!

Working Out Is Priceless

There are a lot of scientific studies that show how doing physical exercises at least half an hour per day has a huge effect on releasing both anxiety and depression. This block of designers frequently causes anxiety and depression, but you can overcome all of them by simply working out. Any type of physical exercise will do as long as you break a sweat – even the simple act of walking a long road. The harder the exercises, the more benefits you’ll get. If you exercise your entire body for at least half an hour per day, you’ll not only overcome designer’s block. You’ll have tons of energy and jump off the bed in the same way in the morning while you’re waiting for a new challenge every day.

Look at the Bright Side

Why would you get scared of experiencing something new when you can look at the bright side by thinking about the benefits? It may sound ridiculous, but let’s put it this way: as long as you live, you accumulate knowledge. Why not accumulate useful information rather than the usual stuff we hear every day? You have the chance to evolve by engaging in a new journey, so go ahead and take a new challenge! Every human being has the ability to learn new things, and he or she can use it totally to his or her own advantage.

Remind yourself of a thing you’ve learned during your life and how you perceived it at first. If you have a driver’s license, for instance, remind yourself about how difficult it seemed for you before driving a car. If you master driving a car now, it means you have already overcome designer’s block. Therefore, nothing stops you from doing it again with something else you perceive as necessary, but you don’t have the courage to act!

Fighting Against the Designer’s Block – Play Solitaire

Solitaire is a simple card game that can nurture your ego and trust in your own abilities. Playing it can become insanely addictive, as the only enemy you’ll have is yourself. The rules are made to induce the player into a pleasant journey where he has to carefully calculate his moves, make decisions according to different situations, build some strategies, and last but not least to not waste too much time. Solitaire will both be training your mind and relaxing it at the same time, and let’s not forget what we wrote earlier about relaxation. Get your hands on FreeCell solitaire which is among the most played games.

We would be delighted to know if you have any other methods of overcoming designer’s block and that we didn’t cover in this article. Feel free to leave us a comment!

The post What is Designer’s Block and How To Overcome It? appeared first on DesignWebKit.

Sublime Text 3

After you have chosen to use a video calling app such as WhatsApp Web for establishing the plans with your teammates, the next step is to choose the right text editor for writing your lines of code. We recommend Sublime Text 3 from the bottom of our heart, as it will ease your programming work tremendously. When you’re typing an opening tag, for instance, the program will automatically place the ending tag and set your writing between them. There are also a lot of useful shortcuts to use in the app once you highlight the desired text.

Productivity Tools for Web Designers – Trello

Trello is more like the program for web pros, and it gives them the opportunity to organize their projects. You can use Trello for grouping projects out into boards. Each card will have its own notes, attachments, comments, due date, and checklists. You can always use Trello for adding other users to your boards to help you in your projects.

Top Productivity Tools for Web Designers – Harvest

Web pros can use Harvest to track the time of their clients through the built-in timer to see how much time is being spent for each client and project. Harvest even allows the user to add unlimited projects. It surely means a lot for a mainly free-of-charge app, although it has some paid options. Over 70,000 companies are tracking time using Harvest, and there’s no wonder why. As the description itself says, we’re talking about a modern time tracking app that involves less effort, improved profitability, and more joy.

WhatsApp Web

WhatsApp Web recently received the long-awaited video-calling feature, although it was initially available only for the mobile version of the Facebook-owned instant messaging app. This means that web designers and programmers, in general, can easily use WhatsApp Web for video calling each other and therefore collaborate in a more efficient way. Almost everyone has a WhatsApp account these days, considering that the service has more than 2 billion users worldwide. This could only mean that you can find pretty much anyone while using WhatsApp Web, the desktop version of WhatsApp. You can also use a secondary account using BlueStacks.

Productivity Tools for Web Designers – Jing

Jing is basically the Snipping Tool built into Windows but on steroids! Whenever you need screenshots for edits and revisions, you can trustfully use Jing to snap them and mark them up. The sharing part is also easy. You’ll instantly get links to your screenshots that you can give to others via emails or WhatsApp. With technology constantly evolving and never ceasing to amaze us all, we can be sure of at least one thing: web design will always be an exciting domain.

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Familiarize Yourself with the Field

Before you go rushing full-steam ahead, it’s important that you slow down and take the time to understand what exactly this job entails. One of the biggest misconceptions people have when learning how to become a web designer is that it’s all about making pretty sites. Aesthetic appeal is important, but there are a lot of underlying factors that have to be taken into account.

Experts know that a good site is all about form and function. The visual elements all come together to create an experience that helps clients achieve their goals. From connecting with an audience to converting viewers into customers, there’s a lot riding on a web designer’s shoulders.

The process is long and often filled with revisions. You’ll be collaborating with a team if you’re in an office or going back and forth with clients as an independent contractor. Make sure that you’re prepared to handle constant feedback without taking it too personally. After all, this is a job, and your sites are the product. It’s not just about artistic expression. Another thing you need to be familiar with is all the other key factors that go into this field. Aside from the HTML coding, there are all sorts of things you need to learn including:

• HTML and CSS formatting
• Digital marketing principles and best practices
• Graphic design fundamentals
• Time and project management skills
• User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) knowledge
• Educate Yourself on How to Become a Web Designer

Speaking of educational requirements, this brings us to the next topic: college. It should go without saying that you won’t ever get a long-lasting career without a proper education. This is especially true regarding the one that’s very technical like web design. There are various types of web designers, like freelancers, agencies and in-house. Freelancers work at their own pace and agenda. In-house designers typically work for a company that has them work on a certain part or the entire website. Agencies are in charge of managing the company, but the thing is that you won’t have as much freedom as the other two options.

How you choose to work is up to you, but you’ll still need a strong education to support your journey. When you research how to become a web designer, you’ll likely find that a degree is considered a bonus rather than a hard requirement. If you decide to be self-taught, then you’ll need the portfolio and references to prove to future employers that you’re the right hire. Because so many people do enter the field on their own, companies are raising the requirements for candidates to ensure they only get the best talent. If finances are holding you back, you can take out a student loan from a private lender in order to pay for your higher education and invest in yourself, while starting repayment after graduation.

Become a Web Designer Sharpening Your Skills

We briefly touched upon the basics of how to become a web designer. Now, let’s explore them in a bit more detail.

HTML & CSS Formatting

HTML primarily focuses on the overall structure of the site and how everything is laid out. It is, however, possible to aesthetically customize the website using only HTML. The problem with this is that it can get mixed up in the main code, which can make it really confusing. CSS lets you focus on the overall base of the website before going into the design aspects. We’ll begin with the HTML’s companion; CSS. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. This is mainly used for the aesthetic of the website such as coloring, pictures, and unique fonts that will be displayed. CSS makes developing a website much easier because it separates the needs from the wants, per se.

Graphic Design

Continuing on the topic of design, you need to learn how to properly implement the coding for it. The colors and pictures you add are also in various forms of code. There are four ways of adding colors; RGB values, HSL values, Hex color codes, and HTML color names. RGB is short for red, green, and blue. HSL stands for hue, saturation, and lightness. Hex color codes use a hexadecimal value and HTML color names when you simply write the name of the color within the code. As for the pictures, they’re embedded into an internal link from a designated location. Each web designer has their own way of doing things, so experiment with each method to see which one you are most comfortable with.

UX and UI

Understanding how to properly implement UX and UI will help the website you’re building soar. The UI of the website is how the website is laid out. Each website has its own unique layout that makes it different from the rest. In today’s day and age, you want to keep things as simple and accessible as possible. Having a complex UI can deter a lot of people. In this context, UX is how a consumer interacts with the website. This can include how long it took for the page to load, what they clicked on, and things they actively searched out. One way to ensure the UX is sufficient is to constantly optimize it. Optimizing simply means making something more functional. You can do this by getting rid of unnecessary clutter, like miscellaneous images.

Become a Web Designer – Start the Job Search

While you’re in college or once you’re confident in your skills, you can start taking on jobs. It can be helpful to offer your services free to family and friends, building sites for them that you can show off in your portfolio. Low-pressure opportunities like this are ideal for newcomers who want to establish a professional image. One of the best things about this career is that there is almost no shortage of jobs. Companies are always on the lookout for aspiring designers to bring on to their team. All you have to do is search, be patient and compare each job offer until you find the one. The road to being a successful web designer may be a long path, but it’s one worth walking if you’re passionate about it.

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What To Look For When You Hire A Website Designer?

Your website serves as your virtual brand to present your business on the internet across the world. Every site visitor is redirected to your site, on an organic drive, or through paid advertisements. For instance, Bellport Branding Web Design is a top-rated web design agency that offers various specialties to meet every business’s unique requirements.

Website Agency Office or Location

An important key factor that is often overlooked is the location or office of the web designer. In this digital age, it is essential to know where your site designer is located. This also gives you the advantage of working with people in the same time zone as you. Furthermore, collaborating efficiently with each other is of great importance for the project’s success. Communication between two parties working towards the same goal is paramount.

Specialty

Website design is a broad field where expertise is essential. Ask the agency or website designer what kind of work they specialize in. Not all web agencies or designers work with all types of design. This is a crucial aspect when you want to know how to hire a website designer that will meet your needs.

An agency that offers multiple services, for example, will let you know what they specialize in without bombarding you with an overwhelming list of different services they offer. However, if they have a particular team that provides various services, they will be an excellent fit for your project.

Are They Trustworthy and Reliable?

There are several other ways to check a web designer’s legitimacy, including certifications, customer references, and awards. These factors will help you identify a reputable agency or designer based on their experience in the industry.  To ensure a well-taken project, trustworthiness and reliability are essential. Find out if the designer or agency has corporate responsibilities, achieved milestones, motivated employees, and more. Feel free to ask any questions with your agency or designer.

Your site designer will likely not accept all of your ideas or provide recommendations since they are the experts in the field. However, they may be able to provide you guidelines or suggestions for the right site design and functionalities based on your company’s unique requirements.

How To Hire a Website Designer? Sample Work

Sample work tells more about the web designer or agency’s reputation and expertise. When checking for their samples, you’ll need to check whether the websites are user-friendly, an impressive line-up of portfolios, and has a unique signature design. While stunning sites are appealing, one thing worth noting is that a well-designed website is user-centered as they come first. While the industry trend continues to change, these ideas must be implemented effectively for every site they created.

Are They Responsive

Your website should also be mobile responsive to rank well on search engines. A mobile responsive site will tend to rank higher than non-functional websites. This allows users to view your content regardless of which screen they are using.  People are increasingly accessing websites from smartphones, which should not be overlooked, so your designer should offer ways to ensure that your online brand is easily accessible and your site is user-friendly to your target audience.

SEO/SEM Implementation

SEO is the lifeblood of digital business. If you want to stand out in the crowd and succeed in your business goals, your content and website must be optimized. Besides discussing SEO with clients, a web design agency/web designer should demonstrate how to apply SEO for your website.

Industry Experience

Experience is essential for any industry expert. This can give you a brief overview of how well-versed they are for the work they do and how they tailor their services to suit your business requirements.

Regardless of whether you want to build a website from scratch or revamp a previous website to increase its conversion rate, your developer should have the perfect knowledge to implement these tasks effectively. Check for a web designer or agency that has worked with multiple companies in the past. Besides that, customer insights and testimonials can tell more of what to expect with a site designer or agency.

Which Elements Identify A Reliable Web Design Agency?

When you are about to find out how to hire a web designer or an agency to work on your virtual brand, here are several essential factors to consider before hiring one:

• Seek recommendations from friends or website owners you admire for their site design.
• Create your vision board to help you visualize how you want your website to look, including the colors, fonts, graphics, phrases, or slogans.
• Identify your priorities and goals to help you work with the correct settings. Whether you provide information, sell products or services, this has a massive impact on your site.
• Create your design wishlist, whether for revamping an existing website or planning to build from scratch; these two have different conversions.
• Identify your budget. Investing in a website design is more likely building your home. The experience keeps coming to the more functions you want to include in.
• Check site page purpose. Check which pages you’ll want to include on your website.
• Create your launch plan. This will give you a better overview of how and when you’ll want your site to be visible and accessible to everyone.

How To Hire a Website Designer – Conclusion

Put in a nutshell, your site’s design is your virtual brand’s selling point. It offers the initial impression of what you are offering. If it doesn’t look right for your niche, customers won’t stay long and move on to another competitor.

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We all love simple website builders, right? Many of them offer super features and usability. After a short while, WordPress and other similar systems gained popularity like exponentially. Now, every normal man can build his own website without any problem. With the introduction of Drag and Drop Themes, it became super easy and sleek to design and build your own website without help of website designer.

Now, things are pretty odd for a website designer. The majority of people anticipated that now the career of a web designer is in oblivion. Is it really that harsh? Many still can’t believe that designer’s careers are finished. Allow me to speak.

No, there is nothing finished. Nothing is dead or dying. It is just evolving. The major reason for such worry is that people are themselves capable of designing a website without knowing any coding or anything technical. So, here’s the thing, you need to think thoroughly. Are people designing the initial design of their website right?

Will you feel better if I say that a blacksmith made a sword with a hammer? Which one is talented and skilled? Is it the hammer or the blacksmith?

My basic point is that people start thinking that the introduction of a powerful tool will knuckle down the entire race of skilled designer! Well, that’s pretty wrong assumption. With a powerful weapon, comes a powerful warrior. That should be your thinking if you’re also a designer like me. Allow me to explain how Drag and Drop will or will not ruin your career.

People may still need a website designer for the coding

Yes, people will always need web designers for the coding part and they always will need them to do that part. A drag and drop theme will definitely give you ample of options to design and customize your website but still, there could many things which cannot be accomplished without tweaking codes, and this depends on a website builder that you are using.

As there are many powerful themes that give you in-depth approach to design and customize your website. Yet, if it is not a very user-friendly website builder, a normal person will not get into those depths of customization where a website designer can reach. This makes him an important asset to unlock those features. But if a user chooses a user-friendly platform like MotoCMS, that chances for web designers are pretty low.

No Uniqueness in the design

This is the factor that really supports web designers a lot. If you’re using a drag and drop theme, in spite of being paid version, this theme will not offer you anything unique.

This makes web designer more secure than ever. No matter how expensive your theme is. You’ll always need a web designer to make it unique.

Some website builders provide really unique professionally-designed themes of premium quality, so they look not worse than custom designs.

The website becomes slow which can cause trouble

The drag and drop builders are builds by heavy CSS and JS codes that take time to load when it comes to speed. Adding more features end up in being a super heavy website.

These websites may have the looks to attract customer, but we’re forgetting that no one is going to wait for more than three seconds for loading your website. If it didn’t load in three seconds, you will definitely lose a visitor. Then what is the point of making a visually attractive website if no one is looking? See, you cannot replace a website designer as he will facilitate you and your website’s heavy CSS, HTML and JS elements to take less space than intended. This is something a drag and drop builder certainly cannot do that. BUT be aware of website building solutions that are really fast and well-optimized.

Search Engine Rankings will affect

If your website is slow, do you think you will rank higher in the SERPs? Obviously not. Not just speed issue fellas, it is about some design elements which need to be modified in order to have a good SEO ranking and this is a thing a website designer can do (if he has knowledge of SEO; Experienced web designer tend to have ample of knowledge of SEO).

Wrapping it up

My major point is not to glorify a website designer and poke drag and drop builders. My main aim is just to make all of you aware of the fact that web designers have no fear from the drag and drop builders. In spite of that, they need to work together with each other to expand the realm of designing.

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