If you are someone who aims to be a successful web designer, knowing just the surface of web design is not enough. As a web designer, you must dig deeper and learn the ins and outs of web design. You must be able to understand what happens behind the scenes to have an edge over your competitors.

Below are some web design facts that will help you and your website:

• Different web browsers will render websites differently.

  • Websites are rendered in different ways by various browsers. This is due to the factors such as parsing and rendering. It is how browsers translate code and display it on a particular device.
  • Let’s say for example, a website will look different when viewed on Google Chrome from your personal computer compared when it is opened on iPhone’s Safari. Some browsers will load the code in a specific manner but there were times that browsers wouldn’t be able to recognize a certain code at all.

• Say no to templates.

  • One good reason to avoid templates: it restricts what you can do to your website. While using pre-packaged templates seems an easy way out for many people who have no or little knowledge about coding, using and relying on these packages too much will make you less credible.
  • These templates have unnecessary design elements and some bloated coding that would affect website performance. Also, there is not much else that you can do or modifications with these templates as it would look like a patched work.

• Codes play a major role more than you think.

  • You may have the most well-designed website out there. It wouldn’t matter if you don’t even have audience that browses and uses the website regularly.
  • Web designers should make sure that the website is coded in a way that will definitely help people to find your website when they type certain keywords in a search engine. Everything from the domain name to meta tags, headers, etc.

• Your design dictates viewers where to focus on your website.

  • While it is fun to put designs or texts on your website, but if a user cannot identify the important areas of your website easily, they will likely leave your page and just jump to another website that offers easier navigation.

• Images and videos can affect your website.

  • Multimedia can be a powerful factor in your website, but it could have a drastically affect your website’s performance. Images or videos that are too large will take such a long time to load. Thus, it should be avoided by web designers to not risk viewers to grow impatient and send them away.
  • Utilization of optimized images and videos for your website is a must.  Web designers also should avoid outdated formats which aren’t supported by today’s mobile device platforms.

• A 2-year-old website is obselete.

  • Lastly, you have to update your website. Keep up with fast-paced technology. Since the web browsers are constantly changing, the way to develop and design websites should change too!
  • Web designers should know the latest coding standards, learn about search engine algorithms, and browser compatibility . An outdated website may not properly display the different elements of your website. Worse, your website will not show up in search engine results.