Unfortunately, even experienced, “fashionable” and spectacular designers forget about vital things. Such mistakes make the result of their work unsatisfying. So we made a small cheat sheet that will remind you of the thing that shouldn’t be missed.
Make a checklist of elements
Sometimes the designer provides a layout with the missing elements. The coders, backend developers, or any other technical specialists, of course, can make the missing element as they see it, but they don’t care about the design. Instead of carefully selected colors, they will add colors of their choice, use standard fonts, and all the efforts of the designer will go to waste.
So that’s why it’s better to have a checklist of all the elements on your site so you can make sure that nothing is missing. In this case you can use special software to Convert PSD to HTML. PSD to HTML is a common design-to-code process, converting a Photoshop Document into an HTML file. This method allows web designers and developers to work together to make a great looking and highly functional website. That will save your time by helping you avoid missing elements.
General recommendations
Before we talk about specific elements, it is worth mentioning the main points that the designer is better not to forget.
Fonts
They should be attached to the layout, otherwise, the developer will download some wrong ones and spoil the design.
Vector objects
Surprisingly, a vector picture should be in a vector and on the layout. Different image formats will look fine in the layout, but they will become soapy on the web. To avoid this it is always necessary to use a vector, for example, to attach SVG icons.
Grid
It is best not to remove the grid from the layout, as it is convenient to navigate by. When there is a grid, it is easier to divide the layout into parts and make columns of the desired width. Then there are fewer bugs in the adaptive layout, and the whole site will look neat.
Convenience for further development
You should always keep in mind that the design will then be converted into a website by developers, and they should have all the necessary styles and capabilities embedded in your design. We recommend that you always agree in advance with the programmers about how they work and what they need to further convert your PSD designs into an HTML website.
Links
Links located in the text are always underlined and should differ in color from the main text.
In large volumes of text and the issuance of heterogeneous information (eg, table of contents articles, site maps, etc.), be sure to provide a different appearance for visited links.
Visual hierarchy
Some areas of your site are more important than others (forms, calls to action, offers, etc.), and you want those to be the ones that get the most attention. If your site menu consists of 10 items, are they all equally important? Where do you want the user to click? Make important links more noticeable.
You should rank the elements of your site based on your business goal. For example, Amazon makes its “Add to cart” button more noticeable with color.
Page 404
It is needed to replace the page, which for some reason does not exist: the product was removed from sale / Link turned out to be broken / Typo in the address/ User forgot to log in and went through a direct link from the bookmarks, etc.
404 has become a universal page for handling errors. But many designers forget to make one, which is a great omission.
UI kit
This is a ready-made set of graphic elements. If the coder needs them again, they won’t have to search through the whole project but can be immediately referred to Ul kit. This makes it easier for other coders to understand if after a while the client wants to assemble new pages based on the existing ones. Making a UI kit is a good tone for the designer. The UI kit may include buttons, breadcrumbs, forms, links, indents, backgrounds, decorative pseudo-elements (e.g., stripes)
Think first, do later
This is a very simple and often violated rule. Especially by young designers. Do a sketch of your site before you start doing it. Make a project plan to prevent the mistakes in design.
Design is not an art
Effective web design and art are not the same things. You should design a website for the user and with a business purpose in mind. Using this principle of web design, you will get aesthetically and financially interesting results. Good luck!
