How to Evaluate Web Designs: 3 Tips for Non-Designers

Hermit Chalwa, Marketing Manager at Spark Design, gives us some great insight on how to assess the standard web design and also which questions to ask your designer to produce the best results.

You manage your company efficiently. You are a star entrepreneur. But do you have any knowledge about web designing? Yes, this can be you! You might own a big enterprise, but if you are a non-designer then there would be an immense difference between you and your web designer’s outlook. In that case, how you can determine that whether a design is perfect or not? To answer this question, here we talk about 3 focus areas that would help you effectively evaluate your web design:

• Determine your goals
• Stay Specific
• Ask Reasons

Let’s discuss them one by one!

Determine Your Goals

When establishing your sitemap, think about what you intend to offer to your visitors from each page. This will form a strong basis to evaluate your design and wireframe. With properly defined foals, you would always be aware of what to offer your clients and efficiently manage your on-going site functionality. So, ultimately what your goals are?

• More numbers of clicks
• Boost in shares
• The high volume of sales and traffic

When you look at the design then think about the functionality of various elements towards those goals. For example, if you wish to increase donations for non-profit, then the donate button must be easy to find. Make sure your site’s functionality is linked to its original goal. Ask your designer to create a design that links to your goal.

Be Specific

If you are unable to offer a clear direction to your designer then you would not be able to expect precise outcomes. For example, might be a few colours don’t work for you, or you want something to pop, you want a modern and clean design, corrections in confusing design, or lots of white space.

Offering such feedbacks is not effective. One can interpret different meanings! As a result, the crux of the problem still remains and there is always a knowledge gap between you and your designer.

But you can bridge the gap by narrowing down the elements that need a change. Rather than just highlighting the issue, you can support it with a valid reason. There is no problem if you are not aware of specific design term. You can even use basic language to describe the feedback. The only vital thing is to ensure that there is sufficient clarity.

Ask for reasons

Your designer is not expecting you to have complete knowledge about the ins and outs of web design and related best practices. However, it is the basis of a good design. This helps the clients to have a better understanding of their designer’s approach. A few things that you might not have considered are:

• Styles of buttons can attract users
• Finger size buttons are important on touchscreen devices
• Images and other elements can impact the page load time, which can affect SEO

Though you are not an expert designer, the design process can be a rich learning journey for you! It is because if you are unsure about a colour then ask why it is used. If you feel typography is incorrect then ask the designer to make such a choice.

If a section is successful, ask reasons that make those elements impressive and special. When you join the conversation and learn about the reasoning process that the designer has followed, then this would offer you knowledge about designs and reactions. If you are not asking questions then you would not be able to give specific feedback.

Bonus Tip!

An important key point is that it is not necessary that users are not similar to customers. Customers are those who would purchase your services or goods. But users are different. It is one of the difficult parts of evaluating the design of a website.

It is essential that you focus on a site’s design is used and how the questions are anticipated. Your customers can be people or another business, but visitors on your website are undoubtedly real individuals just like you.

Hence, make sure you deliver a rich design experience and make your users and customers as comfortable as possible and this is possible only when you can

Hermit Chawla

Marketing Manager at Sprak Design

About the author

Hermit Chawla is a Marketing Manager at Sprak Design. He would love to share thoughts on Website Designing.

Contact us

If you feel inspired and want to contribute with a guest post then don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us

Tags: guest post, How to, web design