Website Design Elements To Consider When Developing Your Brand Identity

Website design covers a variety of disciplines and skills in the creation and development of sites. The different fields of website design cover web graphic design; web user interface design; content authoring, such as standardised web content and proprietary software; search engine optimisation; and user experience design. It also covers computer-aided design (CAD) and software-assisted design (SAD). Web designers use various techniques to create a site and increase the efficiency of its use and maintainability.

One of the main benefits of having a website designed is to create an accessible website for a large number of people. Most audience members have unlimited mobility and screen-readers are not always efficient enough to understand a website's nuances. In addition, most people rely on search engines, so having a design that is search-friendly is essential. Some designers work on only one specific audience, whilst others may cater to all ages and genders. A highly accessible website provides users with a range of tools, links and information that they can use to find what they are looking for and provide them with accurate information and navigation.

Having an accessible website and consistent access to it means that audience members have easy access to all of the information and features on a site. Site maps and content should be consistently accessible, so that site visitors can move between areas using the arrows, or the mouse and navigate within the site. For this reason, designers have developed a variety of tools and formats. These include but are not limited to, drop-down menus and lists of options. Another key factor in ensuring consistent and effective usability is the use of hyperlinks and buttons. Designers also need to consider the layout and organisation of links to assist users in navigating around the site.

Most of us would identify poor user experiences and frustration as problems and they are an enormous barrier to accessing and using a website. Poor use of white space, poor visualisation and the incorrect use of images can all contribute to poor user experiences and frustration. In addition, poor visualisation often involves a lack of contrast between colours and backgrounds or the misalignment of text. Poor use of audio can also cause distractions, and many of the upper age groups are more prone to hearing this type of audio, such as advertising, instead of the more useful content. Having consistent and clear navigation is vital to ensuring the successful usability of the site.

Branding is an integral part of any business and many of the leading brand names now utilise social media platforms to build brand awareness and promote new products and services. Social media can prove extremely difficult for non-tech-savvy business owners because many social media pages are not responsive and offer a non-interactive user interface. To overcome these difficulties, many top brands have tailored website pages that incorporate the main brand messaging into the design and coding of the page. For instance, if a consumer comes to a page with the message "This page is not recommended for anyone under the age of 18" then it will be avoided by this specific audience because it has been designed to target this particular audience.

Consumers are very much dependent on social media websites to understand how brands operate and the benefits of a good website design for brands help customers to engage with brands easily. Many of the top brands use social media in order to engage with their audience and build loyalty within their target audiences. A social media site like Facebook is highly effective at delivering this message because of its inbuilt structure as a community-based platform. It is built around people, therefore it should always include a strong message and benefits of a good website design for brands that encourage engagement within its community. Building a strong community is an effective way of building loyalty with Facebook users and a strong message delivered via Facebook can engage users and drive significant increases in traffic.

Another benefit of a good website design for brands is that it should ensure that the message is communicated effectively to the correct target audience. Certain colours and background styles can be used to target certain audiences, for example, certain colours used on Facebook may be more appropriate for young children while certain colours may be more appropriate for older teenagers. Relevance is a key element when targeting your audience and using colours and other website design elements can help to achieve this. For example, a red background may be more appropriate for an advert campaign targeting younger consumers than a pink background, which would be more appropriate for an advert campaign targeting middle-aged women.

Website designers also need to consider whether or not a layout can be made search-engine friendly. This is very important because some sites are not designed with search engine optimisation in mind and therefore results in pages that are difficult to find and rank high in search engines. The use of white backgrounds in websites can help to improve search engine rankings. However, when a website is developed using a lot of white spaces, then it may actually make it more difficult for users to read the text as the background is just plain white. In this situation, it is often better to use a black font on a light grey background and for brand images, black text on a blue/red background could also work well as long as the colours used for the image aren't too busy.