New skills that every web designer should learn
Web Designing is changing at a rapid pace, once we used photoshop and frontpage, now we have a list of other things that command attention.
The option is to specialize. You need to constantly evolve yourself, and not limit your expertise to just one field. Although it may seem scary, but specializing is not an option for web designers.
For the majority of web designers they need to be generalists, i.e. they need to expand their horizon into more diverse areas.
According to me, there are 5 skills that are important to succeed in this business. Moreover, a web design company is always looking for a person who is good at
Clients need to understand how their website fits into present world and does it fits into online marketing strategy or not.
- SEO intricacies– As a web designer your role is not limited to building website, your clients also expect, you to have some basic knowledge of SEO. Unfortunately, their expectations are bit unrealistic like I need to attain top slot in Google. It’s your duty to explain them in black and white that SEO is not a magic wand. You need to provide awareness about
Best practices in SEO
What impacts SEO?
Also, clients are communicating with social media and it is considered as the best communication tool in present times.
- Social Media- The best tool
Even a cheap web design company is using social media tools like You Tube, Facebook, and twitter to gravitate its customers. However, as compare to SEO, their knowledge is very limited in this field; even the big brands make horrendous mistakes, which in turn affect the credibility of their website on Google.
Also, you must have an immense knowledge about forums, community management, and how to deal with conflict and encourage participation and drive users into action.
Copywriting
Let’s face it. Most web sites are a trash, just because it doesn’t open when the visitors want to open it. Who writes the microcopy that is visible on the websites that we design? What about the error messages, sectional headings, instructional text, and button labels. Normally, it’s come under the purview of the web designer.
The problem is that the words that we use have a huge impact on conversion rates. Clearly worded microcopy is best for the site usability.
Awareness
Earlier web design company used to make a presumption, how somebody is accessing the website. Now in the present times, things have changed even a cheap web design company needs to know that people are accessing websites through different ways like through Netbook, phone, laptop, etc. Hence, a web designer needs to understand how environment and device affects interactivity of the website.
Goal of a website
Most web designers don’t understand the need of website. They appoint you to how website can pave their way to success. It means you need to brush on your skills, and make your clients understand that website is the only way to increase turnover in leaner time.
These are not easy skills to imbibe, yet, they are not the difficult too. Web designers are just advisors. One way of giving clients a realistic idea of their strengths and limitations is talk straight to them, and make them understand the intricacies of business.
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