What’s The One Thing you Look for in a Design?
When you visit a website, what is the most important thing that you need to see to be fully satisfied? Forget about first impressions. Spend some time and evaluate. Step back and look at the big picture. What do you want to see there?
With the upcoming design of Blogtrepreneur, there were a few things in particular I wanted to accomplish. Especially with a site of this proportion and the ideas bouncing around, the coding of the site is half the battle, if not more, but it’s Design Thursday, so we’ll be focusing on the visual elements.
Consistency?
Looking at an entire site, this is always an important factor. Something designers often take for granted when designing blogs because it’s something so easy to accomplish. Usually you’re only using one main stylesheet anyway. On larger sites with a spectrum of features, things can get a little on the confused side. PayPal and Microsoft have been guilty of this in the past.
But for me, I don’t think this is going to do it for me. It’s always nice, but this is something that should come standard with a design. Like you expect power windows on your new car, you expect your designer to create something consistent.
Stunning Design?
I’ve had some people say the sheer quality of the design and the beauty it exudes are main factors in the overall judgement. While the huge presence of nice graphics (or lack thereof, it goes both ways) is great, I think this is more of a first impression kind of thing.
Straight up visual authority could make an argument as an immensely important factor to what makes one believe it is satisfactory. On the contrary, I believe some of the best designs can be actually quite ugly.
Holding the First Impression?
Some sites make great first impressions but die after you scroll a little. This sort of tags back to the two prior points of great design and consistency. One thing I always worry about is that the page looks just as good halfway down, right to the bottom, or anywhere for that matter.
Maintaining that level of impressiveness throughout a whole site is, well, impressive! One could argue being able to do that would make the whole thing what it is. By “what it is” (something I’ve used a few times now), I’m referring to the final product. Good, bad? However it turned out, that is what it has become.
I Want you to Keep Looking
The perfect design, in my mind, does not allow you to pinpoint that one thing that makes it what it is. Behind the scenes it’s part planning and part execution. That’s a pretty standard equation to success, but let me put it this way:
Plan each section, each feature. Have an idea for the author’s page, the archives, the category’s page, the comments, everything. Create variety by basically doing everything. Make a plan and let it all fall into place. In other words, know what you want and go get it.
Whether the site changes colours from one section to the next, or the page layout is different, these are the simple things that make users want to keep looking. From a designer’s perspective, that’s great. It works out for everyone else involved, too, including the owner and advertisers.
What’s Your Thing?
From what I’ve gathered, what I look for is rather obscure. Maybe you want something more simple, or even your aesthetic opinions are shallow (as they should be, no?). It’s a Thursday, which means the highlight of the article should be the comments. Add your thoughts!
Design Thursdays on Blogtrepreneur are brought to you by freelance web designer Connor Wilson.
