With the unprecedented expansion and spread of the Internet, one profession has been being looked for more than any other Interned-related jobs. That profession is the web designer. If it was 18th or 19th century now, they would be composers or court artists. The importance of that profession the nowadays world is immense. Web designers (together with their comrades programmers) develop the most popular and most powerful medium of all time – the Internet. As this text is being written, hundreds of sites are being made worldwide and all of them are created and organized by loads of web designers.
When one market has so many jobs to offer, many people are trying to become a part of it. However, as more and more people are turning to web design, the competition is also becoming tense and hard to cope with. Due to outsourcing, the hourly rates for designers are falling rapidly and many professionals struggle to make a living from web design. Of course, if you are unique and try to be different and more original than your rivals, you will have more work and your wages will be higher. Also, the final product of the site design process usually differs a lot when done by second-class designers and when everything is made by real professionals who know their job.
Since the situation on this market is really vivid and constantly on the change, there are some basic rules that can help every new designer to overcome the first few projects without making some fatal mistakes that might demotivate them. The same goes for those who have already made their start but are still fighting with some initial problems.
First of all, imagine that you are a painter or a composer. Being an artist means making an immediate impact on your audience. Every web designer’s audience are visitors of the sites they have made. Due to some recent studies, site visitors give you precisely three seconds to make them stay on their site or move on. So, that is why the first impression must be unique and professional. Just revoke entering a second-hand shoe shop or a really neatly organised one. It does not matter if that fancy one has better products. It makes people think it has. So, let your site speak by the word and picture of reliability and trustworthiness. And these first three seconds make you a web design artist or a lower class designer-wannabe.
Keeping a website up to date is also of great importance. But the fact that there are millions of similar sites all over the world no matter branch of human interest you are dealing with on your site should really make you think deeply and divergently and make updates every day, even several times a day.
Also, make your visitors stay on your site and do not try to trick them or force them to do anything. This means that the option in which your site opens in a new browser window when the link to it is clicked on is not the best solution. Some designers believe that that strategy will keep their visitors on their site, but it has been proven that it only frustrates the visitors and wastes their time. The back button in a browser is still the best option when it comes to surfing a site. Remember, you need to be an artist and not a web enforcer. Make your visitors stay on your site because you have fresh information and quality content and not by tricking them.
Web designers please share your view.