Good Design vs. Bad Design. Are The Page Elements Responsible for Success?

With all that we have discussed here concerning page elements, display options and languages, I wanted to get a word in on good design. Sure, you want your pages to look impressive and be eye pleasing, but you also want it to achieve a specific goal. That is what divides good design from bad design.

When you are planning your web pages, don’t get all caught up in the cool things that do neat things. Add the elements that you need that stick with the layout and motif of the other pages across your site. But along the design street you are following, keep your ultimate goal in mind. That goal is probably sales conversions.

The one, single element you want to pay special attention to is your text. That has to be current, relevant and targeted to your bull’s eye mark. As long as your page text stays on task and provides the information necessary to the reader, your job is basically done. The rest is all cosmetic and aesthetics.

What I am trying to say is this: don’t overdo it with all the flashy, splashy tech toys that make web design a challenge. Keep to the point at hand, make your statements, get your points across and hold your audience captive. That is the key to web design success.

For example, say your three year old draws a picture of a tree and gives it to you. Chances are you may not even see a tree in there, BUT it goes up on the family message board for display and remains there for a LONG time. That picture has served its purpose and represents good design, despite the fact that it looks nothing like what it is supposed to be.

Likewise, if you design a web site that you want to attract X amount of visitors the first year and you make that mark, that is a good design. It works. It may not be flashy and have streaming videos or animated backgrounds or even a company logo up there. But it works, so the design is good and gets you where you want to go.

Consider the possibility that you spend a month coding every possible type of bell and whistle into your pages, and then they don’t attract a single visitor. Just because you have all those design elements on there does not mean it is a good design. What it does mean is that you know how to code a page and do a lot of cool stuff that may be useful in other places. If it doesn’t achieve that goal you set at the beginning, it ranks as a bad design.

So keep your focus on the product or service you are offering, pitch to your readers and give them what they really want; relevant information. It doesn’t matter if it flashes or blinks or scrolls across the screen. It gets the job done and THAT denotes good web design.

Take all the tips and tricks with you and practice them, but use them intelligently and you cannot go wrong in your web design adventures.