What makes a great website design?

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Here are top 14 web designer skills that a web designer should master!

1. Design Tool

Craftsmen always have a set of tools. As the job descriptions listed above, a web designer must use several essential design software applications. Although it is now possible to design websites in a web browser, tools such as Photoshop, Sketch, and Mockplus are very useful tools for image processing, icon design, and prototyping. Using the right tools at the right stage will make your work more effective.

Adobe Illustrator: referred to as “AI”, is a very good vector graphics processing tool, mainly used for font design, graphic design, product packaging design, book /magazine layout, and illustration design.

Adobe After Effects: referred to as “AE”, is a graphic video processing software introduced by Adobe. In a nutshell, it is a dynamic version of PS, which is very powerful with a complicated operation.

Mockplus iDoc, a design handoff too for designers and developers. Get started for free here.

2. Design Sense

Having a good sense of design is very important for web designers. Web design is more than just making a good-looking website. You must have an understanding of design elements such as typeset, images, and basic design principles such as layout principles, form design principles and more.

3. UX Design

UX stands for user experience, or how people feel when they use the site. To provide a good UX, you need to research your users to help create user personas and use sitemaps to lay out pages and content. This helps you understand the user’s path during actual site visits. Through repeated testing, a website’s design can be improved, ameliorating user experience, and thus increasing user conversions.

4. Responsive Design

With the growth of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, more and more people use small screens to view and read web page information. As a web designer, you should understand the principles of responsive web design to keep your web pages readable on small screens. (12 best responsive web design tutorials to get you started!)

5. Graphic Design

Web design is different from graphic design. If you are a web designer with graphic design skills, this will enhance your marketability.

6. Adobe Animate

Animation can make a dull web page dynamic. An appropriate animation will make your website more attractive. Especially for name-brand clothing, cars, film, and television websites, an animation is particularly important. Visual impact will help with brands identity and recognition.

Web Designer’s Technical Skills

With the rapid development of web development technology, the requirements for web designers are getting higher and higher. In addition to being proficient in professional skills, understanding the necessary web development language will have a longer-term benefit for you.

1. HTML

Some people might not think Web designers should master HTML, however, whether you are a developer or not, you should know basic HTML/CSS. This will help you to more easily read, edit and solve problems. However, depending on your actual work as a designer/developer, the level and scope you need to know may be even broader. In any case, you should be aware of how styles and colors are controlled and adjusted by code. These skills are extremely useful in the long run.

2. CSS

CSS and HTML are partners in website development and are the basic building blocks of web page structure and style. HTML determines the structure of the site, and CSS handles the visual appearance. For example, CSS lets you adjust colors, change fonts, or add stunning backgrounds.

3. JavaScript

With the ability to write design code in HTML and CSS, you can help render yourself more competitive by learning to program in JavaScript. As a web designer you know JavaScript, that may help you solve big problems in actual work. In addition, according to a survey by StackOverflow, JS is the most popular programming language for full stack developers.

4. Web Server Management

Most web designers think they can ignore the server, but the web server and downtime issues are inevitable. You don’t need to be a back-end expert, but understanding how a web server and web hosting and their basic features work will help you solve problems faster.

Web Designer’s Soft Skills

Now that we’ve discussed professional and technical skills, we should look at adding some soft skills to help keep our web design work more organized.

1.Time management

Whether you are a freelancer or work for a company, time management skills are important. The rapid updating of project iterations means that the design must also be updated from time to time. Good web designers need to manage their schedules and follow up on project needs.

2. Project Management

Project management is a key job skill in almost every industry, and web design is no exception. Good project management skills not only benefit the project but also benefit your career.

3. SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is useful for anyone building a website. Web designers and web developers should at least understand the basics of SEO, and that will be a plus for your work.

Many factors can affect the ranking of a website in a search engine, from the content of the site to its inbound links to its download speed, performance, and its mobile-friendliness. All of these are factors that web designers should pay attention to when designing. Once you know SEO, you can use these factors to make the site more attractive to search engines, thus making it easier to find for customers.

4. Customer Service

Although customer service is not a technical skill, providing excellent customer service is a requirement in order for a good web designer to win customers and achieve better results. Even the best web designers/developers may fail.