I’ve never been good at visual art. I have friends who are: they combined talent with a bucket of practice until they can draw and paint and sculpt. They can visualise an object and create it. I can’t do that.

But I can still design a decent website.

Overcoming the fear

We get scared about design. We’re scared we’re not “creative”, by which we mean we’re missing the Magical Spark that will inspire us to create beautiful work.

Luckily, good design isn’t a mysterious gift that an angel has to fly down and bless you with. Design is based on rules. Great artists understand the rules, break them and make masterpieces. But “uncreative” people can learn the rules, apply them, and do a decent job.

Freeing idea, isn’t it?

How to learn web design principles

There are some great books that will teach you the fundamentals of website design. Here are my favourites:

Save the Pixel is an e-book by web designers for laymen. You can glean a lot of the information from the articles on their website web design from scratch, but you should get the book too.

• It’s only 10 pounds ($15 or so!).
• It makes the principles clear… why you should do something before how.
• It’s focussed on effectiveness and conversions.
• It’s incredibly simple to understand.
• It’s confidence-building.
• It’s actionable.

By reading that book and following its guidelines, you will instantly be a better web designer than 80% of people. Seriously.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is pretty good, too, although in a dogfight I’d choose Save the Pixel. (Like many SitePoint books I found it to be a bit shallow in its coverage of the topics.) Still, it provides simple guidelines in newbie-friendly language about the basics: stuff like what colour schemes work together, how to apply the Rule of Thirds, and how to balance white space

How to plan your website design

When you’re crystal-clear on who your customer is and what your customer wants (and how you’re different from your competitors), it’s easier to come up with ideas for what your website should look like

Information architecture 101

Make a list of the tasks your visitors will want to complete, in order of importance. Note: this is what your visitors want to do! While it would be great for us (as website owners) to have your website be nothing but a gigantic “Buy Now” button, we know that doesn’t work. You have to encourage visitors to stay on your website, build trust, and eventually give you money. And to encourage your visitors to stay, you need to make it easy for them to do the things they want to do. (But also make the tasks you want them to do prominent, of course!)

Take a piece of paper and plan out ways you could display these tasks. (Those books will really help with ideas like layout, balance, information hierarchy and white space.) Make sure the important stuff is easy to find, and there aren’t too many items clamouring for attention.

Colour psychology 101

Make a list of emotions you want your visitors to feel while on your website:

• calm
• confident
• excited
• reassured
• amused
• friendly

Think of two colours that match those emotions. If you want people to feel energised, then bright vibrant yellows and oranges are a great choice. Care and reassurance might be warm purple and rose pink.

You don’t want to be overwhelming with colour! (There is too much of a good thing… as almost every MySpace page can attest.) Both of the books I mentioned have sensible guidelines on how to use colour effectively and develop colour schemes. (I especially recommend the free Kuler site for helping you create a colour palette that doesn’t suck.)

Do you have a good logo? If you do, then it should be part of the colours of your website. If not… a great logo is worth paying for. With all the information you have about your audience and emotion, a competent professional should find it easy to design a logo or header that sets the tone for the rest of your website.

Build your design

I love, love, love Headway because it helps me do all the annoying code work of building a WordPress theme without having to code. You can drag-and-drop new columns, resize every element, change the font as you watch, and set colours precisely.

Also, because I am not an excellent developer, I have to keep things simple. I have to resist the urge to add ten thousand shiny doodads because I can’t integrate them. (Simple design is effective. This is reassuring when you can’t do complicated design.)

And then…

You tweak and re-tweak and learn more and rebuild and think about hiring someone and fall in love with widgets and then have to remove them because your sidebar is six miles long and change your colours and get a header made and change your colours again and get really comfortable with it so you can make a decent website design in half an hour and all your friends ask, “How the hell did you do that?”.

Don’t tell them. They will give you pizza for your knowledge.

Have you created a website design? Thought it wasn’t for you? Tell me in the comments!

photo credit: mugley

Design matters. But it only matters so far.

Change your design until it has:

• clear and effective navigation
• enough white space to not look crowded
• a few effective images
• a defined visual hierarchy (where the most important elements are the biggest, boldest and most obvious)
• no more than two, maybe three fonts
• no more than three, maybe four colours
• a search box, and a few other methods for finding content if needed
• minimal clutter
• passed your tests on the desired actions: buying products, signing up for the newsletter, etc

Then stop! Leave the design alone for at least two months, only making changes if they’re really problematic (like not being able to pay money).

Resist the urge to re-do the design because you think it’s gotten “stale”. It’s a good sign when you’re getting a bit sick of the look; that means it’s getting familiar and comfortable for your visitors. Keep a list for feedback and ideas, but don’t implement them.

Instead, spend all that extra time writing content and building relationships. If you use tweaking your design as an avoidance activity (instead of doing the important but scary stuff), be very careful not to replace it with a different avoidance activity. Your Twitter background can wait, and your business cards are fine. So is your logo. Stop it. (Some of you are clutching your chests and thinking, “Oh no! She’s on to me! But how does she know?” Yeah, umm, I just guessed. I’ve never spent three hours changing my colour schemes so finely that no-one noticed but me. Nope.)

Ask questions, and get crystal clear on what your visitors need from you and what they respond to.

Then do your next redesign with a focus on those things.

Your 5-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

If your website does not currently have a design with the desirable features above, schedule time and/or money to rectify it.

If your website does have all those features, start the tweak list. And stop fiddling with the design.

What stage are you at with your website design? Tell us in the comments!

photo credit: RodneyRamsey

Design is a scary word to most of us, but here’s one guideline that will make it easier for you to decide what’s right.

1. Write down the three most important actions you want someone to take on your website:

• signing up for the newsletter
• reading the blog
• requesting a quote
• buying your product
• writing a comment
• sharing a link

2. Get someone else to look at your homepage and ask them to identify the three elements they notice first.

Are they the same three things you want people to act on? If not, it’s time to tweak your design. The most important tasks should be the most obvious visual elements, and everything else should fade into the background.

Do your important tasks leap out to the eye, or do you need to redesign? Tell us in the comments!