Thursday, July 31, 2014

Why Cheap Website Design Just Can’t Survive for Longer

Whenever we approach any business or individual in India to get their website designed or developed, we hear many things such as it is a task of just few days, it can be done by their kids and most importantly you are charging too much. If you are reading this and you are not a web designer, these thoughts may look valid to you as well. But, let me tell you the truth, these all are misconceptions and see why cheap web design just can’t exist or survive longer if it exist?

Modern web design
Creativity, Innovation and Responsiveness are 3 key elements of modern day web design

It might be the game of kids for some but it is a task that requires great creativity and a lot of thing including but not limited to

  • Great knowledge of the brand.
  • Knowledge of the colors/combinations/pallets.
  • Knowledge of latest web design standards and trends.
  • Familiarity with the typical functioning of a website.
  • Use of elements and their representation.
  • Ability to think out of the box.
  • In-depth knowledge of the design platform/software.
And most importantly the experience in the relevant field. However, the kids here literally don’t mean the kids. If you ask someone in your IT department who knows some Photoshop to design the homepage for your website, he might create it with the help from web but the design will certainly not live up to your expectations. And the reason is that, your person does not know anything about website design, use of colors, design elements, creative skills, knowledge of the software etc. However he may have great knowledge about the brand but that alone is not enough.

To create a professional looking website that follows the design aesthetics, brand guidelines and have presence of creativity and innovation, you need to hire a professional web design agency which has all these skills.

A website should not only represent your brand correctly but it is the first impression of your brand/product/services to your potential customer. Only a professional web designer who is familiar with the latest web technologies and trends can design a website that fulfills all your requirements.

Web design takes no time is another comment made by some people to defend their thought about cost. But in actual, a certain process is there to be followed for creating a new website and the typical steps are

  1. Need assessment – Understanding the need of business, brand guidelines and nature of business
  2. Research – Web research for similar industry designs, approach and latest design trends
  3. Sitemap – Setting up website navigation structure
  4. Content outline – Noting of content requirements including images/text/graphics/multimedia etc.
  5. Landing/Home page design – Design of homepage so that it give a snapshot of whole company/brand at a glance and review by client
  6. Inner page(s) design – Individual product/service page, contact/about and other misc pages and review by client
  7. Coding – Converting the design into HTML, CSS and implementing required jQuery, JavaScript etc.
  8. Content population – Replacing the dummy content with the actual one
  9. Browser testing – Testing of website on different browsers and resolutions
  10. Refinement – Code refinement & optimization such as removing extra space, unused commented code, W3C validation and website page speed improvements
  11. Launch – Upload the website on actual domain
Certainly there are many review phases and face to face meetings missed but that is understood. A company/designer spends his/her time to gain knowledge and prepare the design and that’s exactly you are charged for.

However, still there are many single room companies and freelancers who design websites at low cost and have customers too but nor the customers stick to those website for long time neither the designers stick to quality web design.

Welcome to ShapesNLines

ShapesNLines welcomes you all to its creative and knowledge studio, well, this blog isn't any less than that.
With the inception in 2013, we are just a start-up, better to say a creative, professional and innovative digital media company based in Noida, India.

ShapesNLines
ShapesNLines, as the name specifies, specializes in making shapes of designs and lines of marketing. In easy words, we design & develop websites, graphics, multimedia presentations, corporate identity, corporate films and we market your brand on search engines, social media and other online platforms.

The creative and innovative approach we take to make any design for your website is well thought out based on your preferences, industry, latest design standards, latest technology platforms, compatibility, user experience, nature of the business among many more other things.

This is I think enough of self praise, get in touch with us and discuss your requirements.