Advancing Your Design Skills

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Having a big-ticket site does not guarantee good design...and good design does not equal high-cost. Here are some comparisons.

by iManda

I firmly believe that no one is truly unartistic and that years of formal training do not always make for a talented designer. I am presenting a series of articles that I hope will help you to expand your own sense of good design. Although tastes vary greatly, and this makes the web a great melting pot, looking closely at different basic elements will hopefully give you a solid starting point to refine your unique style.

The most common mistake people make is in the assumption that they can't afford a good design for their small site, so they settle for mediocrity. This doesn't have to happen; by pushing the envelope a bit, and taking great care to make your graphics tasteful and professional, you will definitely see an increase in your traffic. It is particularly important for an online business to portray an image that holds together well, since it shows your pride in your company and a desire to create a comfortable and memorable environment for your site visitors.

In fact, many high-budget sites seem to believe that they can coast on painful design because of their already-high revenues or popularity levels. With the standards on the web being raised every day, they're in for some trouble. Take, for instance, Entertainment Tonight Online, an all-out aesthetic assault that comes from a high-profile, successful entertainment show. Now, why would they streamline their onscreen image so much over the years, and then put up something that so greatly resembles a Geocities Nude-Britney-Spears fan page? And this travesty is especially notable since currently unknown sites like Escape Velocity can do so much with just a little creativity and good taste.

Note Fundamental Lesson One: more color does not equal visual grandeur, especially upon a black background. Just because we're an entertainment/culture site doesn't mean we're going for Vegas in the '80s here.

Here's an example of a site that's somewhere in between well-known and unknown, and will definitely gain attention for being design-forward: FamilyNet. Their high-class use of Flash indicates the realization that just because you're a family-television organization doesn't mean your site has to suck. They have a strong sense of the image they want to portray, and they have succeeded in creating a coherent site...even if they currently rank only in the top 332,000 sites on the web.

If your are selling a service online, you must be at least ten times as careful with your image. Envision the site you would expect from a company that "manages corporate dining facilities for Fortune 500 and other large companies", and recently signed a $7.5 million contract with one of them. This is a multi-million-dollar corporation. Now that you have an image in mind, check out Host America. Now come on -- they couldn't have spared at least $25 out of that $7.5 million to at least find a way to GET THE TEXT TO ALIGN? I think that even if you have never seen a web page before in your entire life, you will agree with me that this is NOT the way to portray your corporate image. An excellent way would be with a site like MoistureVision's. Note the professional-looking intro page, and click on one of the links to see an example of how an almost entirely text page should be laid out. MoistureVision is a small company, but their carefully crafted image is already paying off. Fundamental Lesson Two: align your text, and when using multiple fonts, be sure they complement each other.

An example of how important design can be: despite the intriguing and clever television ad campaign of Outpost.com, their site is rather obnoxious and difficult to navigate. Take a look at a competitor, Onsale.com, and breathe a sigh of relief. So while Outpost may have gotten a lot of one-time visits from those out-there ads, their sales levels have left a lot to be desired. Just a year ago, Onsale was a little-known cult favorite; now it's in the top 100 sites on the web. The two offer more or less the same products at almost identical prices. See the connection? Fundamental Lesson Three: when it comes to design, less is more. You don't need all of your content on the first page. If your site is visually inviting, people will dig in and find out what's there.

In the next installment of this series, I'll go through some color information that will help you refine your own gut instinct (which, by the way, is almost always right). Until then, surf around and take some notes on sites that appeal to you.

Part 2