Hi.

For me, webdesign means that the balance between functionality and graphics has to be perfect. Ofcourse, for every website there are different rules, but if you want to create a functional website, there are some questions you have to ask yourself.
In this article I will tell you some basic steps you will have to go through.

For who am I designing the website?
- It makes a big difference to design a website for a company or design a website for your audience. If a company asks you to make a 'fresh' website you might as well give them the most stunning design you ever made... But that might not come to the need of your audience. Keep in mind that most of the times, companies or organisations do not know anything about websites, all they will ask is a 'fresh' website. It makes you a good designer to make something that the company wants and what your audience wants.

("Good designers never do what they are told to...")

Are there similar websites?
- It's always good to look around on the web, looking for websites in the same branch. In what style are the other websites? What makes these websites special? Or what is useless on these website? Is there anything I can do better?

What is my audience?
- Think of age/interests/language etc.. Making a brilliant looking website with lots of flashy stuff, animations and still alot of texts in english won't work for a 3 years old kid with an epilepsy syndrome from Japan...

In what ways is my audience looking at my website?
- Think about their PC! Maybe your audience is planning on looking at your website on their mobile phone. How will that look like? Is the resolution of your website too big or too small? Does the browser of my audience support my website? Does my audience actually have Flash or other supporting software installed? It's a good thing to do some research in what people are using these days.

There are ton's of researches done which you can find around on the web. Google 'm!

Will my audience visit my page on daily base?
- When designing your website, this is one of the most important things. You will see that websites that are visited regularly have a 'simple' design, containing a minimum amount of images. If there is something that people hate, it's slow websites. On the other hand, websites containing your personal portofolio are an example of websites that are not regularly visited by the same people, and therefore it should be better looking than 'simple'.

Does your page follow the rules of the Gestalt psychology?
- Keeping the Gestalt psychology (link) in mind will make it easier for you to think about how your audience will look at your page, or interpreter it. Study the theory.

Is my website 'clean'?
- This has to do with things like color, quantity and lay-out. If you look through your eyes while they are almost closed, can you still tell what everything is? Ain't there too much 'WOW!' effects?

Is my website dynamic?
- Can the programmer easily add or remove an item in the navigation? Can your pages stretch?
- Will your page be daily updated? Than it is important that paragraphs and images need to be movable through your page; again, can your page stretch?

What about my text?
- Most webdesigners forget how important typography is. Using the right fonts on the right places, that's a challange. You don't want a book in a fancy grunge font, so why would you want that as the font in your website? Is your text readable? Think about the contrast of the text and the background, this should always be high! For fonts, I would recommend DaFont.com.


So, that's it for now. I must have missed hundreds of designfacts but then again this is only a summery. I hope it helped you understand more about designing a website!

Good luck!

~Adriaan