Use Graphics the Smart Way to Improve Website Usability
Hire a Graphic Designer to Spice up your Website
There is no doubt about the importance of hiring a graphic designer to create graphics for your website in attracting Internet users. No one would even think to look around the contents of a site if it does not contain attractive graphics that can please the visual sense of the users. With a variety of web sites existing online, it is very hard to attract users and keep them interested in the site.
But a web site developer and graphic designer does not just apply graphics on a site freely. Graphics really must be used in the correct way, or else users could get turned off because the graphics on there just overwhelmed or confused them.
The Graphic Designer Must Design your Site Carefully
While it’s true that attractive design is crucial for reasons that need no explanation, the choice of design must be carefully considered against the fulfilling the needs of users. When done the correct way, it could be said that the web site has achieved its goals.
Graphic designers create graphics that are used in the Internet which would be linked to multimedia. Multimedia is a mixture of graphics, text, sound, and animation to express a message to users. The multimedia features that will be added to a web site should be dependent on the content. In a nutshell, multimedia and graphics should serve as supports to content, and should have precise, instructional purpose.
According to research, animated images can facilitate the transfer of learning in a positive way if it is utilized to show a vital part of the concept that is being illustrated. On the other hand, animation could easily serve as a barrier to user recall and performance.
Below is the list of guidelines in incorporating graphics to web sites:
1. Justify the usage of the graphics
The most obvious problem that can be seen on web pages is the over-usage of graphics. The main downside of this is that complicated, unnecessary graphics can take a long time to download, and this, of course, will not sit well with users. The graphics to be applied should support the transfer of data and should also be in relation to the accompanying text.
2. The difference between graphics with text-redundant data and those containing information that is non-redundant is that the former facilitates and ushers in the learning process, while the latter does not either help or slow down learning.
3. Consistency should be a priority in graphic design
4. Web pages should be marked up so that text will be downloaded before the graphics. In this way, the users will know immediately if the page has the information that they are looking for, and if not, they will be able to save precious waiting time knowing that they do not need that certain page.
5. The loading of graphics should be controlled as such that loading will commence from top to bottom, and the users scrolling down the page will encounter said graphics.
6. The downloading of pages should be fast in order to save users waiting time, and in order to reduce the chances that they will get frustrated that they will abandon plans to download. Here are several ways to achieve fast download periods:
-Keep the physical size of the graphics to a minimum
-Images should be combined in order to minimize the number of server connections. Remember, the more connections that exists, the slower the download time will be
-Decrease image resolution
-Limit the colors that will be used for the images
-Limit the use of animation
Animation is very much a part of web graphic design. The primary difference between web text and graphics and contents that are print-based is the dynamics. Moving displays attract the attention of users as long as the frequency of the display is regulated. Too much animation display can irritate and distract users. An animation that is perpetually moving can destroy the readable quality of the web page.
The usage of blinking texts should be avoided. It has long been regarded as an overused feature and the latest browsers no longer support it.
In designing a web site, there always exists a conflict between the desire to have total control over the appearance of a page and the need to permit users to establish their own preferences. The general appearance of the page should be made by the designer, but there are certain elements that users should have control over, such as color and text background, and the option whether to display graphics or not.
It takes a lot of effort to start and maintain the attractiveness and efficiency of a web site. If the guidelines above are followed, all the efforts of web designers will have desirable results. They only have to remember that the benefit of the users will always be the basis for everything. It is worth hiring a high quality graphic designer to deliver the best results for your website.
