We are all aware of the sayings “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” “Different strokes for different folks” and “There is no accounting for taste.” Unfortunately, although these sayings are universal, the associated insights don’t seem to be. This is nowhere more apparent when designing something for someone else. What looks “professional” to one person, can easily be boring, ugly, or even unprofessional to a different person.

As a web designer you learn that almost all descriptive terms are useless in completing the nuts-and-bolts task of creating a design the pleases the client. You need them to show you what they like, and you need to show them how you interpret that, and there the actual dialog begins.

Over and above pleasing the client, the designer’s task is to make the client realize that their taste is not universal, and their target audience may not respond positively to what they think looks good, or cool, or whatever. More important than pleasing themselves  (or their partners, employees, spouse,  friends or mother) is creating a design that communicates the desired message to the target audience.

What can be even more of a challenge is the tendency for inexperienced website buyers to be fixated on look-and-feel, or the visual design, to the neglect and expense of useability. The desire to speed through, or skip the boring task of information design and content creation to get to the visual mockups is extremely common and uniformly disastrous. Then, when the website flops, of course it is the visual design that is the problem and needs to be fixed.

As a web designer, the best thing you can do to save the client from themselves in such cases is to try to explain with examples, and if that doesn’t work, stick to your process regardless of the pressure to do otherwise.

The very first thing you need to do when beginning the graphic design of a Website is to make two related decisions:

• Will the Website be a fixed size, or will it stretch (or shrink) to fit the visitor’s screen resolution and
• What screen resolution will you optimize for?

For a while, 800 x 600 at fixed resolution has been very popular. And for a while, 1024 x 768 has been the most common screen resolution used by Web surfers ’round these parts. Take a look at my stats from last week:

Screen Resolution Percent

1) 1024×768: 63.81%

2) 800×600: 10.81%

3) 1280×1024: 10.30%

4 ) 1280×800: 2.70%

5) 1152×864: 2.67%

6) 1440×900: 1.57%

7) 1680×1050: 1.17%

8) 1280×768: 1.17%

9) 1600×1200: 1.06%

10) 1280×960: 0.95%

So, if that is anywhere near typical, most of the visitors to those 800×600 fixed width Websites are seeing a lot of unused real estate on their screen. That probably accounts for the recent comeback of fancy page background patterns I’ve noticed over the past couple of years.

Just as 640×480 bit the dust, it looks like 800×600 could be nearing it’s demise in the next couple of years. Not yet though. Ten percent of potential customers is a lot of people to give the finger to by placing crucial content outside of their 800×600 comfort zone. Here are my recommendations:

1. Use a page design that fills the screen at 1024×768, but has no crucial content outside of the 800×600 box.
2. Look at the page design at the different screen resolutions listed above that have a visitor percentage of 2.5 or more.
3. Optimize the page for 1024×768, but make sure it still looks good, and displays crucial content at 800×600 and 1280×1024.
4. Make sure the page design doesn’t fall apart at 1280×800 or 1152×864.

I expect that all those people surfing with 1024×768 screen resolution are getting pretty bored of seeing that 800×600 stripe down the middle of their screen, no matter how pretty the background pattern is. Designing for 1024×768 will make your Websites stand out, and give at least the appearance of better use of screen real estate.

From the standpoint of a web designer there are two perspectives you can take on how the website will be used. The first is the most obvious to most website buyers. It is the sales and marketing perspective. You want a website to sell products. You would like to lead the customer down the click path of your choosing, with the final step being the purchase. You also want to create certain associations with your “brand” in the customer’s mind, such as “our brand is stylish, ” or “our brand is valuable.” You want to condition the user to have certain reactions when seeing your brand. In short, you want to do something to the visitor, or make the visitor do something. You want to lead, or push them into action. When designing from this perspective you start with what you, as the Website owner, want the user to do, and design the Website to that end.

The other perspective you can take in designing a Website is that of the user. The user will come to your Website for a reason. They may want to compare the price of your product to another product, or their budget. They may want to view product or service specifications, download a white paper, or make a purchase. When designing from this perspective, you start with what the user, or users, wants to do and design the Website to that end.

So you may guess at this point that if you were to design your website based on what the user wants to do, they would have an easier time doing that, and therefore have a better experience. They would see the Website as being more usable (easier to use) and feel that they had a better experience after using it. With the Website designed based on the needs of the sales or marketing department, the opposite can be true. Users may feel the site is difficult to use, especially if what they want to do does not match what the sales marketing people want them to do (or think they should be doing) on the Website.

In reality Websites are designed with a mix of sales/marketing perspective and user perspective. Because of company politics, it is usually the case the sales and marketing department has more political power than the Web team, so it’s often difficult for the Web designer to shift the focus on to the user and away from making the Website an online brochure, or an exercise in operant conditioning. It is important that the user’s voice is heard. In the end, the best thing a Website can do for your business is to give the user a good experience by allowing them to do what they want to do. That won’t happen unless you design for it.