Introduction
Hello! Balancing creativity and functionality in Web design is highly important. They go hand in hand when it comes to making your website look nice. For example, you could have a highly creative and eye-catching website, but there’s no point in it if your website is so “interesting looking” that visitors can’t figure out how it works, you’ll get no traffic. It’s the same for functionality. If your website is easy to work and navigate, that’s good. However, if your website is painfully boring, nobody will spend much time on it.
Your audience
As all blogs about web design will tell you, you need to think about your audience and what’s best to put on your sight. For example, if you make blogs about baking but you decorate your site with a lumberjack theme, it won’t make much sense. If your website doesn’t match your content, visitors to your site might become confused with where they are, or if they clicked on the wrong thing. It’s possible that your visitors, in their confusion, can assume your site is some sort of scam.
So when you make your website, give it a theme to match what you’re selling/ talking about. Your audience won’t experience confusion and are more likely to enjoy your website. Take for example the website of a popular singer, Taylor Swift. Who is visiting her website? Who does it cater to? Her fans. Seeing as her music is across many platforms, she has no reason to link her music here. So what does she put on her website? Information on her tour and her merch. So even if one of her primary goals isn’t to get her website a high ranking, it is still visited several times a day because it caters to her audience perfectly.
Show your information in different ways
This takes part in both functionality and creativity. On a website, you’re encouraged not to have big blocks of text. It’s boring to look at and depending on what’s on your website, not very practical.
For example, if you run a DIY blog, a good idea would be to use graphs to showcase ingredients and tools.
Really, when it comes to being creative, it just depends on your website’s niche. Some websites flourish with charts and graphs, while others are better with quotes and smiley faces.
Creativity
Creativity and the visual aspect of your website is what catches your audience’s attention. It’s important to remember that everyone has different definitions of what they believe is creative and not to go overboard. Not all websites have the same needs. Sometimes the more professional option is just simple. As I previously mentioned, it depends on your niche.
A woman named Slyvia Plath once said, “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
Right now, my creativity is using a quote in my blog.
Functionality
While your creativity is what catches your audience’s attention, the functionality of your website will have keep your audience actually on it. In this case, imagine your website as a coffee shop. Creativity is the sign on the window offering free wifi. Functionality is the wifi having a decent speed. Because, besides all the creative and visual appeal, your website still needs to work.
The quote I explained earlier was part of my being creative. The functional bit of it is relating it back to this blog without making it sound like I’m trying to meet the word count.
Balance
As most things go, everything is about balance. Make your website attractive while not taking away from its intended use. That’s what you have to keep in mind.
