Basics of Web Authoring and Design

What is Visual Design?

Visual design is the use of imagry, color, typography, shapes, and form to improve user experience and enhance usability of your website. It is the various methods and theories that are employed to dictate how the surface plane will display the various HTML elements will be displayed over the world wide web.

Purpose

It takes users 50 miliseconds to form an opinion about your website. That opinion works to determine whether a user will stay or leve if they'll ever come back. This means that your site has 50 miliseconds to make a good first impression that will be determined by the visual appeal of your website. This good impression depends on many factors: structure, spacing, colors, symmetry, text density, fonts, and many others.This was found to be true in a study conducted by Elizabeth Sillence that analyzedf how different design and information content factors influence users trust of online health websites. The participants' feedback regartding the sites in the experiment was broken down into design and content: 94% of the feedback was about design and only 6% was about content.

What they also found was that poor interface design was particularly associated with mistrust and rejection of the website. Therefore, in order for a website to thrive, it must have quality visual design to keep viewers on the page and quality interface design to keep users on the site.

In a different study that examined the effects of visual appeal and usability on user performance and satisfaction within a website found that users' perceptions of low appeal were not significantly influenced by the site's actual usability. Rather, their assessment of a site's visual appeal was entirely dependent upon the visual design of the website.

In short, visual design methods and practices will help you draw users to your site and keep them coming back.