Copywriting is an intrinsic part of web design, but it can easily be brushed aside for a beautifully shot photograph or well drawn image. Pictures have the power to create an emotional response in the audience, which is worth its weight in gold. An image can also communicate instantly, as our brain can interpret them much quicker than text. They can give depth and context to a description, a testimonial or story and provide a much more immersive experience than writing alone. Web designers who know how to use images can manipulate their audience to feel whatever they want them to feel. A great website design can rise or fall on the quality of the images it contains, which is why it’s vital to get it right.

If the product you’re selling is new, innovative or just different, images are the best way of highlighting them. A good, clear image showing how the product works, solves problems, answers questions or otherwise will appeal to their target market will sell, and sell well. Being able to explain the innovation or the USP of a product instantly is just a fraction of the power of images. Television has used this power for years, a good news piece isn’t regarded as broadcastable until there are images to reinforce the power of the story. A breaking story doesn’t seem real until there are cameras there to show it in every detail. Advertising wouldn’t work half as well if there was just a blank screen and a narrator or piece of text describing the product.

Images can also be used to educate. The number of how-to guides and videos that appear in web designs now backs up this assertion. A good image or video can show someone what to do instantly, and clarify problems with a single shot. Adding these resources to a product website is a great way to remove a potential barrier to ownership of the product in question.

Websites that use images well can sell a lifestyle, an ideal, an idea of whatever the product needs to sell more. They can sell the features in an instant and provide clear and accurate information on the product. Having a well shot, clear image of something is the single best way of selling from a distance. We know that selling on the internet is difficult at times because the buyers can’t touch, images go a long way to overcoming that.

Article Credit: Orlando Web Design

A quick search will yield thousands upon thousands of websites with tutorials on how to build websites, most offer solid concepts and ideas, but which teach you why and how you should do things?  Moreover, how do you know your design and coding is in the best interest of your client and the viewer of the site?  Here’s a list of common mistakes made in web design so you can avoid them when building your own site.

Leave the visitor’s web browser alone!  Don’t force a new window to open and don’t resize it.  Sure, it frames the content you’re coding perfectly but it’s a total disservice to your viewers and leaves a bad taste in the mouth of them.

Skip the welcome screen. The welcome screen or Enter Here screen is 100% pointless and serves no purpose for your website viewer, regardless of cool you might think it looks.  Furthermore, because no content is on it, it looses ranking in search engines.  Aside from being a web design mistake, it’s an SEO mistake too.

Let the visitor turn music on. Never force your visitor to listen to music, they might be in a public place that it’s not appropriate for music to play or may just not care for it.  Either way let them decide if they want to listen to it or not.

Don’t forget the contact page. An emerging trend recently is the lack of a contact page.  I don’t know how this happens, but it’s one of the most important pieces of nearly any web design.

Use readable fonts in graphic design elements. Because the number of fonts that can be used as plain text is very limited for the Internet, many web designers create graphical elements to represent fancy text into site designs.  Make sure they are not too big or too small and are easily readable.  No sense in creating content that no one can read.

Test your site in multiple browses and at multiple screen resolutions to ensure it not only works, but also is readable across all. Horizontal scrolling is not an acceptable way to view a page it just never caught on.  Most web designers are smart enough to not use Internet Explorer as their default browser but it’s still installed on millions of computers, spending the time to double check it works can be crucial to the site traffic and flow.

Never use pop-ups. For that matter, never use pop-unders either.  Advanced web browsers like Firefox block almost all of these by default but visitors to sites don’t want to be forced to to another window.  Tabbed browsing is available in all browsers – pop-ups are dead.

Avoiding these common web design mistakes will ensure your site keeps traffic and is readable, fresh and fun for all who visit it.