Skills You Need to Become a Web Designer in 2020

Designing a website is like designing the interior or the exterior of a building. It’s not just like a skill that you can learn easily, you need to have some skills to properly do this work. You need to be a problem solver and a creative person to better design a web.

The idea is the first step in developing an overwhelming design. Most of the readers who search for tips on web designing online thinks that what is exactly the web design or should they choose this as a career.

To better understand whether this career is the right path for you or not. First, learn about the skills that you need to master. So you can estimate whether you want to do it or not. Anyway, there is nothing impossible in life if your hard work.

How To Improve Web Design Skills in 2020?

If you already have some experience and you would like to improve it, we recommend checking out coding challenge websites where you can learn and practice your skills. What’s more, many of those websites are working with companies and help them to hire people, so if your good you might score a great job!

Skip the hustle / Learn CMS / Create Amazing Websites

CMS stands for a content management system. It’s a very efficient way to build fully functional and professional-looking websites. In fact, more than 70% of websites on the internet use some sort of CMS.

It requires some learning as well but it’s definitely the fastest way how to build your career as a web designer. Every CMS has many FREE and PREMIUM themes available, which are already pre-designed and ready-to-go website solutions.

If you wanna just play around, try FREE themes but if you are serious about building websites, we recommend using PREMIUM themes. Here are a few reasons why:

• considering how amazing they are in terms of functionality or design, the const NOTHING! Usually around $50
• every PREMIUM theme comes with documentation or video tutorials on how to use it
• premium themes come with support
• the code is clean and contains fewer bugs

Most popular content management systems are:

• WordPress (the most popular)
• Joomla
• Drupal

Editors note: for example, our WebCreate website runs on WordPress CMS and Publisher Theme.

Here are a few resources for  WordPress:

• Most popular solution with tons of VIDEO tutorials is DIVI theme
• How To Create a Website With WordPress Step by Step (our tutorial)
• How To Install WordPress (Video)
• Fastest WordPress Themes 2020 – (fast loading speed is great for SEO)
• Best Portfolio WordPress Themes Collection
• Best Ecommerce WordPress Themes Collection

How to Learn Web Designing?

You need to learn some technical skills to become a web designer. Web development and web design are the two parts of making a website. Web developers just take the design and turn it into a functioning website while the designers are responsible for the visual layout of the website.

To become a web designer, you need to be an expert in:

UX

UX means user-experience or how they feel when they interact with the website. The main perspective of a website is to provide a better user experience. First, know that what is your website about and what the user wants from the website. It can be a product, service or just information.

The best way to do it is by creating a dummy user on the website and check the layout. See how the content and pages are with a sitemap. Check through each page that is user wants to get contact info or the user wants to click on the social link. All of these things help you better understand the user experience of a website.

Visual Designing

Well, you must have knowledge of designing to become a web designer. The visual design of a website means the look and feel of it. Then visualize a design and there can be different proportions to the grid system, to typography and to color theory.

Moreover, the fonts and palettes are also important because the website is about the text. So the text needs to look catchy and readable for better user experience.

Design Software

Well, you need to learn the tools that you need for web design. There are many tools like Sketch, Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop that almost all designer used for creating logos, assets, and mockups.

Moreover, they can be used to change and modify the photos according to your design.

HTML and CSS

Well, the coding parts are done by the developer but a designer also needs to know how to code. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Html is just the structure and CSS is the makeup as it tells the browser how to style and format HTML web page.

Coding

Coding is important because it goes very far beyond HTML. You need to know how to code in as many languages as you can, and you must find a coding language that works best for what you do. If you need to learn PHP or another style to complete a project, you may need to start studying now.

Someone who has built a large set of skills over time can use those skills in the future. You can relate your experience to your clients, and they may ask you to show them how you have used those skills in the past.

Art Design

Art design is a good skill to have when you are building websites and mobile apps for your clients. You must know how to make a background look beautiful, how to use colors to attract customers, and how to use art to make a statement.

Art design uses perspective to arrange the foreground, midground, and background. You may create a complex website or app that has all three aspects represented, and you will attract more customers simply because they like looking at what you have made. When you are playing art design for the site, you may need to use other skills mentioned here to make the site work including animation, special software development, and integration.

Software Development

You must know how to develop software that will serve your purposes. This does not mean that you are building a full suite of software specifically to solve one problem. This could be as simple as designing a plug-in for blogs that will help you get the results that you want.

Software development may include producing a program that can provide the functionality your clients want, or you may produce a program that only does one job. You are customizing the experience for your clients, and they need to see that you have built something that only they can use.

Communication

You must learn how to communicate with clients. Your clients are counting on you to make something functional that will help them grow their business. Your clients cannot get the results they want if you do not communicate very well. Plus, you need to let your clients know when you are making changes when you plan to upgrade their site or software, and any industry trends they might want to know about.

You must be comfortable working with clients in face-to-face meetings, and you must know how to use the input you get from clients to create what they want. You cannot simply build the site or app you want without thinking of what the client asked for.

Communication also includes things like sending professional emails, approaching vendors for certain products, and updating your clients in a professional manner. You also need to know how to explain to your client when things are not going well. You must be fair and level-headed in your assessment of any situation so that you do not upset the client.

Animation

You can learn how to do basic animation for the backgrounds of a website or to animate an infographic. Your animations do not need to be complex, but they need to be interesting enough to get the attention of the people that shop with your clients. When you have done your job properly, your animations will be extremely popular.

Plus, you can build this skill over time to include even more styles of animation that might make your work look that much more professional. You can see the progress that you have made over time if you continue to study each new skill you have tried.

Versatility Among iOS And Android

You must know how to program for both iOS and Android. Many companies will focus on one style of programming or the other. When you are not making apps or software that work on both platforms, you are making it that much more difficult for your clients to reach their target audience.

It may be hard to get hired if you tell your client you only program for Android, and you may not get the best reception if you tell customers that you only program for iOS. Have a bit of versatility in your back ground that can be used to keep clients happy.

Selling And eCommerce

You must know how to build eCommerce pages for your clients. Everyone wants to sell online because it helps bring the public that much closer to a business that may rely on local sales much of the day. When customers make their own eCommerce pages, they often get poor results because they cannot do all the background design work and automation that is needed.

You can build an eCommerce experience for your clients that will include the shopping cart, wish list, and even recommendations when customers buy certain items. You can vastly improve a website when i is easier to shop, and you may show your clients several versions of the same webpage so that they can choose the style they like most.

You can take charge of adding or subtracting products from the catalog, or you can automate the software to update inventory levels so that customers know when items are running low or are out of stock.

Integration And Automation

Integration and automation are a vital step for any company that currently uses several programs that are disjunct or difficult to manage. Your clients are losing money every day when they are not using advanced software to manage their money, to handle inventory, or to communicate within their own office.

You can create automation programs and integration that will help the client get the best functionality out of their site. This is a very simple thing for the client to use once you have set it up, and the client will start saving money because they are not using outdated techniques and software. Plus, you can add this automation or integration to their website, to their mobile app, and to any web apps that are contained on their site.

Conclusion

When you have learned all the skills above, you have quite a lot of things that you can use to help your clients. You also need to hone these skills over time so that you can get better as time goes on. You might dabble in one of these skills to help a client, but you need to learn these skills properly so that you can use them in all settings.

You are promising your clients that you can help them, and you need to know how to produce instant results. Learn more coding languages, how to communicate, about eCommerce, art direction, and animation to become a well-rounded programmer.