build your career as a professional website designer

In today’s technological evolution, websites have been one of the best things to come out of it. Websites have allowed us to learn more about specific brands and organizations. If you visit different company websites, you will go through the description and objectives of their organization. You will also see their history and the people involved in making the company successful.

Professional websites have enabled businesses to expand their market to other parts of the world and maintain their brand management strategies. Customers have yet to find it easier to buy their desired products from websites. For example, you can go to Starbucks' website and order your favorite morning coffee. Besides that, websites have also made it easy for students to look for their desired information. Although libraries are places to be for information, you can only carry thick books sometimes.

It is all good to go through established websites and complete your objectives. But how about becoming a professional website designer yourself? Many entrepreneurs are learning how to become a website designer. They go through different programming tutorials on YouTube and build an excellent website. The emergence of established website builders has made it easy for them to build a website. They take advantage of online features and tools provided to them and build a quality website for their business.

Tips to Become a Website Designer in 2023

1) Avoid Hectic Color Schemes

Since you may have seen different color combinations for different websites, it is easy to go overboard with color psychology. Although bright and bold color schemes are the preferred choices of professional website designers, the visual noise they create overpowers the rest of the website design.

website color schemes

Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website

Since you are the website owner, you must stick with a simple color palette and typical background colors. A toned-down background gives you instances of color, such as colors on the call to action (CTA) button, menu items, and other design elements. Sometimes all you need is a simple background deemed good enough by your visitors. To identify the right color combinations for your website, you must study the importance of color theory in the digital world.

2) Analyze the Images You Want to Include

Images significantly impact the website's overall feel. If you have taken blur images, it can even diminish the best of web designs. Generic stock photos can drain the life out of your website design, making it uninspiring and unprofessional.

Professional website designers tend to include high-quality images. Many options are available for you if you want to use stock photos. However, don't just integrate them into your website without doing any homework. Here are some of the functionalities you can use in your stock photos:

  • Use filters
  • Manage the saturation
  • Modify the warmth
  • Increase the contrast
  • Use photo-editing techniques to improve the quality of stock photos

Since you are the website owner, you must ensure that your chosen images are relevant to the context of the content. If a photo is attractive but doesn't relate to any website section, it is better to leave it off your written content. Finally, it would be best to focus on the file types you are using for your website. It would help if you learned the difference between JPG and PNG files. Adding the correct image files will also impact the loading time of your web pages.

3) Learn About SEO

Becoming a website designer isn't just about how creative you can be with your artwork; it is also about following search engine optimization regulations (SEO). The techniques you use in building your website design play a massive role in your SEO ranking.

search engine optimization

Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website

Since you are a website designer, you must learn the following aspects of SEO to improve your reputation:

  • Learn how to use header tags, such as

    ,

  • Learn how a slug, a link identifying a specific page, can influence your search engine rankings
  • How to optimize the website loading speed and decrease the bounce rate, which defines the number of visitors taking one action before navigating away from your website

4) Use Responsive Design

Professional website designers don't just build websites that are pleasing to the eye but also ensure that their website is accessible across all devices. Whether your viewers are using a laptop or a mobile, they should get a similar experience on your website. If you invest a lot of time in building complex animations, likely, they will only work on some devices. Hence, it would help if you focused on improving the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) for all viewers.

If you follow the requirements of a responsive website design, you will create an optimized experience across desktop and mobile devices.

5) Consistent Typography

Showing consistency with typography goes a long way in making a quality website design. Professional website designers don't just add written content without doing homework; they ensure that the selected font size and style make it easy for the viewers to read your content. If you own a blog website, typography carries much more significance because you must regularly update your website with content.

website font typography

Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website

Consistent typography helps your readers to stay engaged and have an uninterrupted experience while going through your content. Headers, footers, links, and body of the content must have the same style and size from one webpage to the other. Furthermore, line spacing, size, and color should be identical for a specific type of content.

6) Take Note of Diversity and Inclusion

People landing on a website come from different regions, backgrounds, and cultures. Becoming a website designer means creating an engaging user experience for everyone. When you consider photography and illustrations, you must ensure that they represent people from different fields of life.

7) Define Who You Are as a Designer

It is a common theme for professional website designers to incorporate multiple skills, including UI, UX, and other aspects of website development. Top website designers have a variety of focuses while working on projects.

Since there are so many aspects of a website design, it is only possible to be involved in some things simultaneously. Hence, it would help if you focused on exciting and interesting aspects for your viewers. Professional website designers understand that becoming experts in their specialties will make their designs more attractive to potential clients. Although many designers tend to jump from one project to another at the beginning of their careers, the best approach is to find a suitable niche.

For example, you must identify the type of businesses you are most excited to work with. If you are into the technological field, consider prioritizing SaaS companies and startups. If you are passionate about food, you can build a quality restaurant website for your culinary appreciation.

Defining yourself as a professional website designer helps limit yourself to your artistic aesthetic. Whether you want precision-crafted designs or want to push the boundaries with conceptual design, ensure that you have a unique design voice. Understanding yourself as a web designer makes it easy to find suitable projects and clients to work with.

Implement Your Website Designer Tips on Strikingly

As we have explained before, the evolution of website builders has made life easy for professional website designers. They can take advantage of top-class online features to build their dream website. Strikingly is a professional website builder that helps you to build a top-class website without writing a single line of code.

strikingly website designer

Image taken from Strikingly

When you head over to Strikingly, your objective is to create an online space where you can grow your network. You want to build an eye-catching and captivating website to gain more visitors, who will eventually become your clients. Professional website designers tend to build the best-designed websites that sit on top of the Google rankings, which will help you catch online users' attention.

freelance web designer

Image taken from Strikingly

Strikingly provides you with all the necessary features to help your website stand out from the rest of your competitors. After registering for a free account on our platform, you will gain access to our compilation of pre-designed website templates. Our provided templates are also responsive, meaning you can access them with the same user experience on desktop and mobile. You can start implementing your website designer tips here and build your website from scratch. We provide you with a drag-and-drop feature, which will help you to assemble different website elements according to your business demands. For example, you can integrate your social media platforms at the bottom of your homepage. Similarly, you can add a call to action button on the top right corner of your website homepage.

Conclusion

Many companies and organizations are searching for professional website designers today. They remain on the hunt for people who can build functional websites which clients can visit. If you want to fulfill your dreams in this field, don't hesitate to go through the tips to become a website designer. Developing technical and creative skills are essential to becoming a website designer. You can either take web designing classes or go through tutorials on YouTube.

Strikingly is a website-building platform that makes it easy to build attractive websites. We provide you with all the necessary features and tools to build a quality website design. If you cannot implement your website designer tips on our platform, you can contact our Happiness Officers immediately.