The internet recently celebrated its silver jubilee anniversary. Ever since its inception in the 80’s, it has undergone a lot of changes and has evolved for the better. With changes in web designing, websites and designs have also undergone plenty of alterations. An evolution has been noticed in the last two and half decades, with the modern web designs being better optimized, aesthetically more pleasing and more functional. The evolution has witnessed the gradual obliteration of DIY web designers and the rise of professional designers, artificial intelligence, easy to use website builders and even the impact of video games.
Evolution of websites
During the early days, high-speed internet connection was generally unavailable. This led to the creation of simple, text-based sites with little variation in terms of visual content, layout, font or typography. As time passed on, standard wired internet connections led to better coding systems such as PHP and HTML. The amazing GIF images and long form videos came to existence. The present day internet sees flashier websites which are a complicated mix of imagery and audio-visual content devised to offer a better experience instead of simple information.
From DIY to Professional-Grade Designs
Internet surfing has now gone beyond work, and it is also a pastime that involves browsing for interesting information, social networking and communication. Most businesses have an online presence these days. Naturally, millions of dollars are being invested in web designing every year. Businesses are competing with each other to create better designs for their websites which stand out due to their originality, attractiveness and user-friendliness.
This competition has almost but erased DIY web designers from the scene. In the early days, DIY web designing was possible with some basic knowledge of coding. This resulted in the creation of badly optimized websites which never led to successful conversions.
SEO Optimized Web Designs
With Google and other search engines emphasizing more on SEO-friendly web designs and layouts, businesses began to demand designs which are efficiently optimized – in a bid to attract search engine spiders or crawlers enough and rank high on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Web designs had to go beyond aesthetic beauty and user-friendliness and become search engine-optimized as well.
With increasing demand for better, more attractive and more optimized web designs, large scale organizations started to hire highly efficient web developers for thousands of dollars rather than settling for a low-cost alternative. It began to be generally understood that opting to save a few bucks in web designing can actually impact business image and revenues in the long run.
AI and Drag-and-Drop Website Designing
The rise of professional web designing made it more expensive to build websites and blogs which could compete with those created by professionals. Startup companies and individuals found it too expensive to make business blogs and websites and promote their products and services. Website builders and web hosting companies tried to create affordable alternatives to costlier web designing and development.
A few organizations such as Weebly, Wix and Grid, came with innovative solutions which became life-savers for affordable yet professional-grade web design solution seekers. These companies devised a new technology to assist webmasters to make professional websites within a few minutes, even without any technical know-how of coding and website creation. This type of technology makes use of artificial intelligence produced by a complex algorithm of programs and logics to create website builders which can create sites in a couple of minutes. There is no need to spend a lot of time and invest plenty of effort to create templates and code your entire website. These instant website builders have become hugely successful with students, startups and individuals always looking for web designing solutions within a small budget.
Influence and Impact of Video Games on Web Designs
The game industry has also had its fair share of impact on web designs. Like websites and the internet, video games have evolved a lot in the last 3 decades. Although video game design and web design does not seem to have many similarities, a closer look will show that there is much common ground between the two.
- The basic purpose of both game and web designers is to create a final product which would satisfy the expectations of customers or audience, entertain them and make them enjoy the work. They want to ensure a very positive experience and make visitors or customers connect with the brand.
- Much like game interfaces, web designs have to be intuitive, supremely usable, engaging, attractive and likable. These have to improve the overall experience for users. A good web design interface needs to be easily usable, contextual and designed to satisfy the objectives of websites.
- Users learn easier with immersive experiences. For content, charts and smart graphics are obviously winning strategies to use. It is always better to break down complicated concepts into very small ideas.
- Users show a better response to drip-fed content at almost all times. For instance, a blog post offers sufficient info with every paragraph to keep users reading until the end.
- Users also like websites which are easier to navigate, which is the same with video games. Bad video games often come with high navigation difficulties, a jerky camera or many problems which can make playing difficult. They like websites with convenient navigation features, which makes information easier to find.
Beyond the design of interface, a wide variety of techniques and tricks are used by most of the new age games to keep users engaged while playing. Most of these methods would be ineffective for many of the websites today. But it is worthwhile still to analyze them and check whether any of them can be adapted to a website. It is particularly relevant in content creation.
Most of the games available today involve developing relationships between different players. Better responses are observed from people when they get the chance to meaningfully communicate with each other. Designers who wish to add any type of user-driven content to websites can use the same principle.
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