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Design For Web - Workshop (1)

Why do we have a website?

- Promotion (Advertisement)
- Informing
- Persuasion
- Contact
- (Entertainment)

Audience

The audience is NEVER for everyone! There is always a target audience in mind.

Factors that a website should have

- Usability
- Aesthetics
- Funtionalilty

It's got to look good, it's got to work and it's got to work well.

Good number of pages is around 4-5 for a general website.

Landing Page?

Why is it there? What is the point? If you can't explain why then its pointless. Most of the time opening straight up with the portfolio page will keep attention and people can easily click though your work rather than being faced with a 'slideshow of work'.

Contact Page

Email Address
Actual Address
Phone Number

Twitter
Behance
Cargo
Tumblr
Pinterest
Social Networks

Option to put it in a footer to keep it on all pages.


About Page

Could be linked to CV and vice versa.


CV Page

If your a freelancer then it  might not be necessary to have a CV

Sometimes it's good to just have a CV that clients and businesses can instantly get the info on.

You can do a non-standard format and creative CV to make it more appealing.


Shop / Link to 

Depending on what kind of your designer you are. Links out to Etsy or Big-Cartel.


Homepage

This is normally the landing page so it has to be important. Personally I think that this page is unnecessary though. Samples of work, Minimalist approach?

Quotes/Fee's

It's really unnecessary from a design point of view to have quotes on your website because this differs from every client and job. It's better to have 'email for quotes'.

We then went onto to mock-up the landing page for our personal websites. After this we then went on to critique each others work.





Webpage Mock-Up





Feedback




Comments on Feedback

Overall I am really happy with the feedback my mock-up received. I received compliments on my logo and placement, simple navigation and placement again, the layout being unique and different to a simple grid layout. Use of grids being used well and they liked the idea I had of the projects being able to click on each photo which takes you through to a slideshow above the portfolio without leaving the page. Logo and links are stripped back to the basics which people said worked well with an overall clean professional layout. 

Some constructive criticism was to be careful of the grid going of the page because this is on trend at the moment but it might look dated. I suppose i agree with this comment to an extent, but you have got to stand out in a current market and look like your on trend but also be unique at the same time, so getting this balance is essential. It was also mentioned that there was a strong focus on the work but maybe in need of some more information. I think for a home page, lots of imagery is essential because people tend to spend no more than 5 seconds on your page before they decided whether or not they want to stay or leave. The information can come later, when they decided to click into a certain case study of work but it's definitely something that is worth thinking about. 


Common Pieces of Feedback throughout


- Clean Layout
- Unoriginal Layout
- Easily Usable Navigation 
- Redundant Features - For example a scroll window inside a window. Is it really necessary?
- KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid
- Use of Grids - makes a big difference when moving into digital. 




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