The merits of good design
Great design when it comes to websites cannot be compared traditional design concepts like landscaping and interior decoration, and even canvass art. It is ironic that design, when described in an online context, is not about aesthetics. Some of the more popular sites existing in the Internet are known for their neat, unassuming appearances.
The main consideration when doing any given web design project is making sure that the end product will have one overriding trait. This trait is functionality. A site will appeal better to audiences in the long run if it contains items of substance, no matter how mediocre its visual appearance is. These high quality content in turn must be arranged in a way that makes them easier to view, neat, and having a smooth flow of ideas in them. Combining these two aspects of functionality and substance will give the website its great design. Aesthetics will always take a back seat to good functionality online.
This is especially true with a commercial website. Such sites are workhorses that are designed, built actually, to do one purpose, and that is to trying to sell its products or services. Therefore, an e-commerce site is not meant to be pretty, but rather to be highly functional. Functionality, in this case, entails good page load times plus a huge capacity to accommodate several visitors at any one time. All elements of the design should be purpose-built to do business with customers. From the navigation buttons to the visual layout, to images and text content, everything about it is involved in the marketing goal. Reliable storage of information and a robust security system will safeguard buyers from identity thieves who might hack into sensitive data submitted to the commercial site for its customer records. Again, aesthetics takes a backseat to good functionality.
The benchmarks of design, however, are constantly evolving to keep up with the growing needs of an ever-expanding Internet. For many sites, particularly the bigger ones that currently enjoy huge popularity and viewership, upgrading is a fact of online life. It is a necessary undertaking that must be done regularly, else risk being swept to the sidelines in obsolescence. In other words, an excellent design today may not be acceptable to future audience tastes in, say, three to five years later.
Popular trends in web design are therefore influenced greatly by changes in the needs of the online communities. As these communities grow, so does their needs. Developers are constantly innovating ways to make websites load faster, hold more information, become more secure, and entertain more people. And this is not counting the technology that governs aesthetics. The good news is that a website needs only to keep up with the tastes of the viewing public in terms of its functionality. Though beauty fades, usefulness never goes out of style.
