Design needs to work: Design & functionality go hand in hand

Everybody is talking about design nowadays as its importance, relevance and necessity becomes apparent from day to day. I’m not only referring to websites, but to all aspects of life. Design is in everything! Even the fork that you use while eating, or the pen that you use to write have been designed.

Design is not just making things beautiful, but also functional. At the end of the day, something beautiful that doesn’t work well or isn’t comfortable or easy to use, actually becomes less attractive. You become frustrated with it and loose sight of its appearance. This is why everything that is designed must make sense and work correctly in order to be considered a successful design.

Websites are also products!

So of course, websites need to follow the same logic. They must also be beautiful and appealing to view, but if there are problems with the flow of the content, having trouble reading or difficulty navigating through the site and finding the desired content, the website has failed. The visitor gets confused and frustrated and ultimately leaves the site.

With websites, there is also another aspect that goes along with it (though, only for the owner of the website), which is the Content Management System, or CMS. The owner needs to update his site periodically (some more than others) and this too needs to follow the same guidelines of design and functionality. You want the process of updating your website with new content to be easy and clear. You don’t want to be forgetting the process each time or doing something wrong.

Don’t ignore either one

But you have to be careful not to concentrate solely on the functionality of the site and forget about design! They must work together and balance each other out. Both are extremely important and necessary for a successful website and so shouldn’t be ignored. This symbiosis could be seen in the details of “mouse hovers”. When your mouse pointer hovers over a button, there should be feedback that this particular element is a button. It needs to give this feedback, but should also be beautiful and unique.

Using a theme-based solution may be an affordable way of creating a website, but you loose these important aspects. Although some themes are indeed beautiful and functional, they usually look like so many others! They are sold multiple times for a variety of purposes and just blend in with all of the rest. If you want your website to stand out and to truly look different, you want a unique design.

So of course, when searching for the right agency, you need to choose the one that knows how to create a website that looks great, is unique and is also easy to use and navigate through making design and functionality to work together and to help each one succeed.