Good content is important. Good website design is equally important. But many people think it isn’t. If you are one of those, let me show you some facts.
Marissa Meyer of Google found that an additional delay of a mere 0.5 seconds to page load time resulted in a 20% decrease in traffic!
And she was not alone. Greg Linden of Amazon found something similar.
During split-testing and A/B tests they tried delaying the page in increments of 100 milliseconds and they found that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in profits and revenues.
In another survey 94% of the people said they won’t trust a website if it has a poor design. The same research found that sites with dark color schemes grew at the rate of 2% and sites with light color schemes showed a 1.3% growth rate. I can supply you with more and more data but I think you get the point.
Below I have collected a list of four good quality web design blogs that you should start reading if you want to improve your designing skills.
1) IM Now — This is the official blog of the website IM creator.
The blog is intended to give you the latest information about the web design industry. For example their article headed Must Have Skills For A Successful Web Design Career gives you useful tips on what skill set to have to succeed in web design.
The company, IM Creator, provides website creation services which makes site designing so easy that even those with no design or coding skills can create and publish a website.
2) Codrops — Codrops is a web design and development blog that publishes articles and tutorials giving its readers fresh insights into web trends, techniques, and new possibilities.
The website was started as an experimental blog but it soon became an exciting playground for sharing the passion for web design and web development.
The Internet is changing every day, pushing the boundaries of how websites are built from the fundamental structure to the most delicate interaction effects. And at Codrops they share that information so that you can stay in sync with these changes.
3) Treehouse — This website’s mission is to bring affordable, technology education to people everywhere, in order to help them achieve their dreams.
Actually the site is dedicated to teaching website design and mobile development for Android and iOS. Founded by Ryan Carson and Alan Johnson, Treehouse gives people affordable ways to learn about technology and business. They have a rich library in which you can explore projects, video tutorials, and workshops on everything you need to know to build a website and roll out apps to mobile marketplaces.
4) Web Design Ledger — The Web Design Ledger is a website which publishes articles which are written by web designers, for web designers. The primary purpose of this website is to act as a platform for sharing web design related knowledge and resources. Topics range from design inspiration to tips and tutorials and things related to that.
It is a developer-authored publication offering digital design knowledge and resources. The articles here range from interesting new web design examples to free Wireframe kits, the website is a world in itself of web design news, articles and tutorials.
I hope this list of four websites above would have helped you in some way. Let me know in the comments below what you think of this list.