Web Design Skills

Good website design requires many different skills, and at Decent Design, our expertise goes back 25 years. Content has always been 'King" and marrying that with an aesthetically pleasing design is still a challenge. In recent years the introduction of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices has thrown yet another complication for web designers - websites now have to be "responsive" so they render on large or small screens automatically. The final hurdle for web designers is the dark art of SEO and being found on the search engine listings.

However, your web presence is part of your business Internet marketing, and the information you provide must be inviting and lead visitors to take some action! We aim to apply all the elements of decent web design to our work and each element is explained in detail below.

Search Engine Optimisation - SEO

To put it simply, effective SEO is what draws users to your site, and great design is what keeps them there. So often ignored, by website designers, SEO is the hidden skill behind your website. Good Web Design & SEO are very closely related and dependent on each other to give the best performance. Decent Web Designers are fully responsible for search engine optimisation during the design stage. If you can't find a website or webpage, it has little or no value. Thousands of companies offering to optimise your website (for a price) have popped up in recent years - make sure you don't need to hire one.

Meticulous Copywriting

Copywriting or the textual content of your website is part of the SEO process, and the placing keywords within the text is essential. Grammar and spelling mistakes look sloppy and reflect on your business. The prime function of copywriting, however, is to turn a website visitor into a customer and the marketing technique "APS" (Attention - Promise - Sell) applied to every page where possible. More Info ......

Responsive Design

Google made mobile friendliness a ranking factor in 2015 and with the increase in use of tablets and mobile phones it is now essential that all websites are of a responsive design - that they can be display properly on devices of all sizes from a phone to a desktop computer.

Fast Loading Websites

Why is this important? Whether you have a webpage or website, they must load quickly for the following reasons:-

Search Engines like fast loading websites, will index them higher in the results and is part of the SEO process.
Not all viewing devices have a fast connection to the internet. e.g. mobiles on 3G.
Some viewers will undoubtedly lack the patience to wait for a page to download.

The secret to a fast webpage is to avoid the unnecessary and optimise both code and graphics. Two to three seconds is a reasonable time for a page to load. Best practice for designing fast pages:-

Optimise all graphics
Use a server with a rapid "response time".
Use website compression
'Minify' all scripts and combine files where possible.
Avoid bloated content management scripts
Avoid remote fonts and scripts

Intuitive Navigation

Website visitors will vary in their skill levels and on a multi-page website it is essential to have simple intuitive navigation. Buttons and links should have two states to indicate that they can be clicked and lead to appropriate pages or information.