Talk to different people, and they will offer you different viewpoints about what they think are the important design considerations for a mobile website.  These points of view might differ on various grounds, but there is a common thread that runs through all of them, which is that it is definitely the time of the ‘Mobile Web’. Online promotional battles will now be fought and won on the mobile web. A mobile website is the need of the hour and businesses that don’t have one will miss the bus.

But, having a mobile website is not enough. This website must be expertly designed in order to be successful. An important fact to be noted is that the factors that determine the design of a traditional website do not hold true for a mobile website. The considerations are different and the recipe for a successful mobile website design is founded on taking note of these considerations.

Before we list out the top three considerations, it’s important to understand that when a mobile user is accessing your mobile website, the conditions in which it is being accessed have a big role to play in determining the mobile website’s design. What this means is that the general environment, usage, motion, lighting conditions, internet connectivity, etc. all have a big role to play in the design of mobile website.

Now, let’s have a contextual look at some of the top considerations that determine the look and feel of the mobile website.

A smaller screen size

Quite obvious isn’t it? When accessing a particular website using a desktop or a laptop, you have the advantage of a larger screen size. But, when it comes to a mobile device, the size of the screen goes down appreciably. The mobile website must be designed for a smaller screen size. Also, there is a range of screen sizes on offer when it comes to such devices. Your mobile website design must cater to all these sizes. There are some designers who take the easy way out and miniaturize desktop websites to suit the smaller screen size of mobile phones.  But, more often than not, this solution breaks the user experience. This is why it’s important to create a specialized design that can adapt to this difference in screen size.

Simplification of Navigation

Another facet of a mobile website design that is very obvious. A mobile website does not have the luxury of a complex navigation process. A mobile user has to make do with trackballs, touch functionality or tiny keypads in order to navigate a website. So, the design of the mobile website must focus on navigation clarity and make it more intuitive. Most mobile websites have a list of links on the homepages that take visitors to the main features of the website. A vertical representation of these links is the norm, as is the reduction in the number of categories and levels of navigation. One of the better ways of simplifying the navigation process in mobile websites is by ensuring that users gets an immediate visual feedback, when they choose a particular link.

Keep the user input at a bare minimum

Your design should be such that it minimizes user input. Touch screen functionally and tiny numeric keypads have ensured that mobile devices pack a punch and offer a range of functionalities, but entering the requisite input data is not a cakewalk. Many users find it a real chore to enter data on the miniscule screen and end up making errors. So, in the interest of your users, the design must be extremely user friendly. Keep the URL short, and ensure that the necessity for data input is limited. Offering users the benefit of smarter default values, and minimizing the essential data fields is just one of the many ways that user input can be minimized.

Each site has a different level of user input required. But, the design of the website must ensure that users have no problems in entering the required data.

This is just an overview of the 3 important aspects that need to be considered for the purposes of designing a successful mobile website. But, these are not the only ones. A successful mobile website design is a coming together of various diverse factors all of which have just one aim – improve website usability.

There can be no website design without a well-defined concept and there can be no concept without keeping any eye out for the objectives of the website. Everything’s connected and it’s only an objectivity driven concept that lays the foundation of a successful website. Nowhere is this fact more relevant, than in a website selling products or services, also known as an ecommerce website. From an online business’s point of view, it’s of paramount importance that the website is designed to promote business growth. Each and every design component must be used in such a way that it converts website visitors into customers.

For everybody who is thinking about opening an online business and wants a website for this purpose, it’s important to note that rather than focusing on the kind of web pages to be designed; importance must be given to the kind of results you want to achieve with the design of the web pages.

A concept driven website that is designed to pull in target customers and improve sales figures is a product of systematic planning, creativity, expertise and attention to detail.  If the website needs to be objectives oriented, it needs to be an outcome of a cyclic process.

Let’s have a look at that process.

Focused Ideation

You must have a set of ideas for your business, in terms of the products/services you want to sell, online promotional endeavors, website visitors’ engagement, sales objectives, and many more. It is your ideas that will help you give shape to your website, and ensure that the website’s design satisfies all the objectives that you have set for your online business. Idea generation doesn’t happen out of thin air. For the right ideation, you will need to develop an understanding of your target market, the needs and expectations of your target customers and the current trends that can have a bearing on your online business model.

By ensuring that you have an in-depth understanding of the needs of your target customers and your market competition you will be able to give shape to a concept that perfectly aligns with needs of your business.

Building the Web Design Project

Once you have a clearly developed set of ideas, you need to give them proper direction, and allow them to come together to form an effective concept. While this is being done, you are actually building your web design project. This is the stage where all the project brainstorming happens and website designers create a wireframe design for your website. This is also the time when you will fine tune your designing concept and will be able to get a bird’s eye view on what your concept will look like when it takes the form of a website.

Website Design

The designers now get into the act. They are ready with the wireframe that has been vetted by you, their client. So, all they now need to do is fill the wireframe with the design components that work best for your chosen concept. An experienced website designer will always keep scope open for making changes to the design at a later stage and not use a design process that makes for rigid designing that cannot be changed. A design of a successful online business website has to be flexible.

Quantitative Analysis

Before your online business website goes live, the design must undergo a thorough quantitative analysis. Yes, a qualitative analysis is also a must, but that is largely subjective. What is more important is measuring the design’s potential to achieve your business’s objectives. There are various parameters that you can take into consideration for this purpose. The call to action button, their placement on the web page, their ability to catch the attention of website visitors, the website’s navigability, the website’s products details pages and its shopping cycle are all parameters whose consideration will help you analyze your website in a quantitative manner. If you don’t like what you see, you can always make changes at this stage. It’s never too late to do so. Remember, you are looking at a website driven by a core concept. Your quantitative analysis must adhere to this concept.

Learn from feedback

Now that you have a website that has aligned itself with your concept, means you have a potentially successful online business website on your hands. You have covered all your bases, but there is one thing that you still need to do. You need to keep track of the choices made by your website visitors and get their feedback. This will help you make further improvements to the design, if any.

This will take you to the first stage of the process, which is focused ideation. As mentioned earlier, the process of developing a concept driven website is cyclic. A concept can never be rigid and its strength lies in its fluid nature. This helps you as an online business owner to make changes to it and adapt to ensure that it meets the needs and requirements of your prospective and existing customers.

Your logo is a visual representation of your company and all that it stands for and differentiates your company from the scores of others who might be operating in the same business domain as you are doing. Your customers are going to identify your company with the help of its logo, and therefore it makes sense for you to design logo that is worthy of your business. In doing so, it’s important that you avoid certain mistakes that will not only affect the quality of your logo, but also create a bad impression in the minds of both prospective and existing customers.

Before, we begin listing out the mistakes, it must be noted that no logo is error free. But, the errors must be such that only the designer and the business owner are aware of them. For the general public, the logo must come across as a personification of perfection.

So, let’s get things started

Amateur logo

Let’s begin with a question. For a logo to look extremely professional is it absolutely necessary that is designed by experienced hands? The answer is a big fat NO. You don’t need an experienced designer to ensure that your logo has professional look. But, what you do need is a professional logo designer. This means you should get your logo designed by experts, whose business is logo design. They need to be specially trained in the various facets of logo design and mustn’t be somebody with no knowledge of the tools used for designing logos.

A logo that is an amateurish attempt, looks so, and doesn’t do any favors to your business. In fact, this tells prospective customers that your business isn’t serious about its branding efforts and consequently might not be serious about its products and services also.

Represents the latest Trends

Now you must have read exhaustive articles that tell you to make your logo as trendy as possible. So, if ‘gradient bevel’ is the in vogue, you go for it and if there is some other design component that is making waves, you integrate that into the design as well. But, you are forgetting one important aspect of all trends – They come and go. On the other hand, your logo is forever, until and unless you decide to rework it or change it completely. Before you ride the waves of trendy logo design, it’s important to measure these trends for their longevity. Your logo should be timeless and even if it does confirm to a certain trend, it’s important that trend is there to stay. If your logo looks trendy for a year, and looks out of place after that, it means you have made a big mistake.

Thinking it’s your Logo

Another mistake that logo designers make is thinking they are designing the logo for themselves. This thinking needs to be sorted out at the initial stages itself. There should be no doubts in their minds that they are designing the logo for their client and it must meet their needs, requirements and expectations. Sometimes, designers go above and beyond their brief in designing a logo. The logo becomes an avenue for exploring their creativity and the use of any new font, design element or trend they want to use in design. In short, they lose the plot completely. They forget that the logo should be all about the client’s business needs and not their own creative needs. The logo shouldn’t become a flight of fancy, but stay rooted to the core objectives of the client, his business and its branding.

The impact of these mistakes is such that they can break the back of your logo. This is why they must be avoided at all costs. One cannot ignore these mistakes as they don’t remain hidden from the eyes of the target audience. All that these mistakes will do is they will reflect the inadequacies of the logo in bold terms.

The momentum behind HTML5 is building rapidly. Yes, there are a few big names like Apple that are driving this popularity, but there is absolutely no doubt that HTML5 brings plenty of benefits to the table and goes a long way in improving the functional quality of web applications.

Let’s take a look at how HTML5 is improving web applications.

Enhanced typography and font customization

The adoption of web fonts such as Web Open Font Format (WOFF), Google Web Font API, and Typekit etc. in HTML5 means developers now have the reins of the app text in their own hands. They can now determine how the text will look and ensure that they are able to optimize the expression of this text and control it as they see fit. With the HTML5 Web Design framework, the reliance of developers on images and Flash implementation is slowly but surely going down, which means the design & development team can now focus on text that not only looks good, but also works well with search engines.

Consistent Specifications

One of the biggest advantages offered by HTML5 is that it has made it easier to develop a web application that is compatible with numerous browsers. This is because it offers browser vendors a consistent set of specifications, right to their minutest detail, which in turn also ensures that the implementation of the web application across all browsers remains the same.

Enhanced Graphical Interactivity

With its integrated canvas elements, HTML5 helps build better and more interactive images with help of exhaustive graphics libraries. Earlier, the JavaScript layer couldn’t draw picture with the available data, but with the use of HTML5, this has become possible. The focus of developers has shifted from textual to more creative solutions.

Unified Environment

Developers can make better web apps as HTML doesn’t require the use of a collection of languages and just one language – JavaScript will suffice. Even in the case of the data model, it’s just XML and Document Object Model that is used. Also, when it comes to binding graphics, video, audio and the text, developers can use only one set of rules, which is CSS to do the same. With its unified standards, developers no longer need to use a different set of tools in a web application.

One of the core ideas behind HTML5 and all that it brings to the table is not just making things easier for developers and producing advanced web applications, but also to bring about a convergence of web and desktop applications. HTML5 seeks to get rid of developers’ dependence on third party plugins and extensions. For now, this is a work in progress, but there is no doubt that with the various benefits of HTML5, there is going to be a revolutionary change in not only the way web applications are developed but also in the web applications themselves.

You will need to strategize your web design efforts. You should develop a crafted strategy that takes into consideration, the various factors that are going to have an effect on your website’s design. You need to, evaluate all factors, keep the best and discard the rest.  As somebody who wants a successful website design, it’s your responsibility to identify a web strategy that is going to make this a reality.

Define the purpose and the objectives

There are some websites that only provide information about a specific topic or subject. Their purpose is to provide knowledge and they don’t have any marketing aspirations. Is your website one of those? A majority of websites on the internet are marketing tools for businesses. Is your website an online marketing tool? There are other websites that are essentially online businesses and integrated with a shopping cart.  Are you looking at getting such a website designed for your business needs? The answer to such questions will help you clearly define your purpose.

Once, you have clearly outlined the purpose of your site, you now need to identify the objectives of your site. Ask yourself what you want your website to achieve.  In the case of informative website, all you might look for is website visitors, but in the case of an ecommerce website, your core objective is making sales.  Your objectives have a very important role to play when it comes to designing your website.

Strengths and Weakness of your Website

If you want a successful website design, it’s important that you are truthful to yourself. So, with all honesty, you must determine the strengths and weaknesses of your site. Even though you think, your website has the best concept in the world; it’s going to have its weaknesses. So, identify them and if you can, correct them at the strategizing stage itself. There are times when you want a website to integrate a certain feature to help meet its objectives, but this gives rise to certain weakness in the website, which needs to be ignored. The weakness cannot be helped. But, the fact that you know about it means you can take certain steps in the website design to negate its impact.

Put yourself in the visitor’s shoes

This is one of the more crucial steps of strategizing. You need to be able to think from your website visitor’s point of view. Think about how the website is going to come across to the website visitor. Will the website design impress the visitors? Will it be easily understood? Will it be able to deliver the message in a manner that creates the right impact? Keep asking yourself these questions to enable you to fine tune your web design strategy. Be completely user-focused when it comes to your website design. This is the stage when you will need to work out your layout and navigation strategy. The idea is to make things easy for your website visitors.

A well constructed website design strategy is all about questioning your concept all the time. This is the stage where you can keep correcting your web design ideas and ensure that they are more in tune with the purpose and objectives of the website.