Are you a learner or beginner in the web design field? Then you are in a situation where the competition is fierce, and the demand for super-creative professionals is high. In this situation, you have to be the best by converting your client’s requirements into outstanding website designs. The first thing you need is inspiration, and this article can help by providing a practical web designing guide for students like you.
Web Design Ideas for Students – 8 Tips
Let`s go through 8 basic tips that will help you stay more creative and follow the best practices of web design. If you are a student and are going to pass the exam soon, check out Exam-Labs, which offers exam preparation courses so you can prepare on your own without attending classes or buying expensive materials.
1. Reflect the Business and Its Products/Services
If you look at the most successful websites on the Internet, you will notice one thing in common. It’s the design theme. It will be in line with the company or business nature and will be reflecting its products and services. This should be the first consideration while you are designing a website.
Look and Feel
The nature of the business and its audiences can give you an idea of how its website should look. For example, if the company’s target customers include women or young girls, you should consider colors, fonts, and images that look more feminine. If the company provides fitness products, the theme can look more like a gym showing instruments and people accordingly. Below you can see an example of a good decision for a sports shop.
The First Fold
Use the most engaging ad campaign or banner as the first thing visitors see on your website. You can also use an image depicting the front desk or the most successful product or a picture of social activities being done by the business. Most importantly, the banner area of the website should prompt visitors to scroll down or know more about the company.
In the beginning, you can use this source to take it as an example and inspiration or base for your own web design because the website is plain, but has the right composition. This will be useful in gaining knowledge of the best practices and will help you in establishing your presence as an efficient web designer.
2. Take Care of Readability and Easy Navigation
This is also one of the most important points to consider for beginners and therefore is among the top web design ideas for students.
A website represents a business or organization online. On that note, it has to work like a window through which a visitor can view the company and what it provides. Furthermore, it has to be a place where a potential customer can communicate with the business.
So being a web designer, you must ensure that the visitors can easily get whatever they are looking for. This is the most important thing you need to keep in mind as a web designing student in order to create user-friendly websites.
Starting from the fonts style and size to the color and placement of elements, everything has to be done by keeping the audience in mind. If you are designing a website the audience of which will be mostly elderly people, the text should be easily readable. On the other hand, if the target visitors are from a group that has little time to spend on the website, you have to make navigation easy. Ensure that your design has elements that allow faster functions, shorter forms, and quick ordering features.
3. Provide a Search Engine-Friendly Structure
Have you ever wondered why some websites fail to end up on the first page of search engine results? Also, they still do so even if their content is interesting and well-written. Well, this is because they fail to ensure a structure that makes reading easy for both readers and search engines. While discussing the web design ideas for students, this one can’t be ignored at all.
So, what makes your design suitable for a search engine even when you are not going to write any content?
- Provide a place for breadcrumbs – they are also called secondary navigation. A user can understand where he or she is on the website by looking at this section.
- Use headings (i.e., H1, H2, H3, etc.) – they form a crucial part of text formatting and are important not only for readers but also for SEO.
- Use bulleted points where possible – they are good for quick information and keep visitors interested.
- Show important menu items right in front and on top and use the footer to list useful links.
- Avoid excessive use of images if the website is not for a business related to visuals and pictures.
- Use thumbnails and zoom effect on click to optimize page speed.
4. Make It Mobile-First
It’s a known fact that more and more people are using the Internet on mobile phones and tablets nowadays. So, as an obvious thing, you have to consider mobile devices while designing a website. More importantly, you should make your design mobile-first. This would not only help attract visitors but also keep them interested in your website.
Google has already made it clear that the templates with mobile-first designs will get more attention and better ranking in the search results. If you want to make your client’s website more effective, ensure it has a mobile-friendly design. Additionally, it will help the website in achieving desired objectives like traffic and conversions faster.
5. Get Ideas from Other Websites
While it’s good to come up with amazing design ideas, it’s better to observe the designs of other websites as well. This is particularly helpful in finding practical web design ideas for students and beginners. Also, if you end up with no idea in mind for hours, it’s good to get inspiration from other sites.
There are many websites that can make things easy for you when you need examples of the best designs. Some of them are Awwwards, Behance, SiteInspire, Freepik, etc. You can visit these sites to find out the most popular and award-winning web designs. They will surely help you create outstanding designs for your website projects.
6. Use Online Tools to Organize Your Content
Thanks to some powerful but free websites and tools like Pinterest and Dropbox, media organization and file sharing are quite easy.
Being a fresher in the web designing field, you may end up with the messed content and a feeling of confusion. Furthermore, it will be difficult to get a particular image from a huge file if you are not using a smart tool.
Pinterest can be a great place to collect and group pictures and visuals and serve as the solution to this problem. You can create mood boards with labels like layouts, images, colors, etc. Using this website will save your time and energy, specifically when you are involved in a large project.
Similarly, you will also need a file-sharing facility when your client will be sending you the files, and you will be sharing initial wire-frames and drafts. Dropbox is among the most popular platforms that not only provide you free storage but also allow you to share files with others.
Being a professional working online, you will get a lot of benefits in terms of organized media collection, secure and quick storage, and easy file sharing by using such tools. On that note, using them (or similar ones) can be the best among the web design ideas for students and can make your life extremely easy as a web designer.
7. Plan Well Before You Start
Planning is an ultimate requirement for any successful project, no matter how small it is. Web design is not an exception, and you will need a step-by-step plan in order to get it done timely and within the budget.
A concrete plan for designing a website includes the following.
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- Clarify the website purpose of a page you create. Doing this will help you understand what is required and will keep you on track to make sure the result matches the expectations of your client.
- Once the purpose is clear, you should think about the visitors and their expectations. You can do this by adopting a visitor’s point of view, i.e., thinking of what they expect while using your website.
- Next is to create and follow a styling guideline including the font, size, colors, backgrounds, click events, etc. This will help you to create a consistent look and feel, which is crucial for an effective website design. Facebook, Google, and Twitter are the best examples of websites featuring an outstandingly uniform style.
8. Follow the Basics
Though we have discussed some of the cleverest web design ideas for students above, there are some basics that you must follow while designing any website. Creativity is always a game-changer, but never forget the site visitors as they are the end-users. Keep the basic web standards in mind along with creativity to make an out-of-the-crowd yet user-friendly design. You may order the third-party services to help you, e.g. write my essay by domyessay.
Some of the basic things in an effective design are the logo design branding, navigation, search feature, contact information, social media icons, and call-to-action buttons. The site visitors will be expecting these elements to be available and easily accessible. Some of these elements should be present above the fold while they play an important role in conversions.
Summing Up Web Design Ideas for Students
Creating a design for a website is easy, but creating an outstanding one that contributes to bringing and retaining the visitors takes a lot of considerations. However, these web design ideas for students will surely turn the tables for you if you are a beginner. Though these ideas are not exhaustive as there are many others, they are the most important ones that no web designer can ignore. We hope you will find them useful.
Best wishes!