Front End Design & Development to Improve Your Website Customer Experience

A while ago, one of our customers who was curious to know about frontend design and development, asked us what exactly it is and how are we going to improve his website and mobile app with front-end development?

Over the phone, I told him that its purpose is functionality. It is the output in HTML (often generated by PHP, Python, and JavaScript) and CSS for designers formats. I couldn’t explain it over the phone as there was so much for him to learn about this subject. I thought of sharing a blog post to explain some basics of frontend design and development, along with some front-end design tips to improve customer experience.

What is frontend design and development?

Have you ever come across a beautifully-designed website and wondered what exactly made it look so? Have you noticed the way it was laid out, the way the buttons acted when you clicked them?

All these things come under the scope of front-end development. While web design outlines the way a website will look, front end development takes care of the implementation of the design so that it looks as it was desired

Understanding the Front-End Stack

Frontend development stack

Rendering websites can be a hard nut to crack. With so many differences in the type of user-devices, browsers, access points, bandwidth, programming languages, and environments, building a consistent web experience for the user can be a difficult task. Thanks to browsers and the standardizing bodies (like the W3C); we have some pillars in place to give control where possible.

These pillars are:

  • HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language
  • CSS: Cascading Style Sheet
  • JavaScript

The most important thing to take out is that HTML, CSS, and JavaScript work coherently in a browser to create a “static” web experience for the user.

DOM

DOM stands for Document Object Model. It is the actual and live result of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript co-existing in a session activated by the user.

Skills Needed for Front-end Design and Development

A web developer needs to be well-versed with the limitations of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and DOM to deliver the results that are appreciated by the client and loved by customers. At i-Verve, our front-end design and development team utilizes dozens of front end skills that they have to provide its clients the features which are the most in-demand right now. All of these are critical skills to build a robust B2B website and mobile apps.

  • HTML & CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • JavaScript Frameworks
  • Front End Frameworks
  • Experience with CSS Preprocessors
  • Experience with RESTful Services and APIs
  • Responsive and Mobile Design
  • Cross-Browser Development
  • Content Management Systems and E-commerce Platforms
  • Testing and Debugging
  • Git and Version Control Systems
  • Problem-Solving Skills
  • Cross-platform deployment
  • Integrated development environment

It is expected that the delineation between “product design” and “front-end development” as separate functions will disappear in the coming years.

A new ecosystem of tools has begun to appear which supports new ways of working. This ecosystem allows product design teams to work collaboratively and more efficiently. Now, the teams have moved from the age-old process of creating static designs in Photoshop to embracing a much more extensive toolset. It includes collaborative design tools (e.g. Sketch, Figma), dead-simple prototyping platforms (e.g. InVision, Marvel), user testing services (e.g. UserTesting.com, Validately, and Lookback) and designer-developer collaboration tools (e.g. Zeplin).

Also Read : Hire Dedicated Resources for web and mobile app design development 

How Can Front end Web Design Improve Your Website’s Customer Experience?

Frontend web development process

Front-end development takes care of a host of things, from aesthetics of the website to its usability. Here are the top improvements that a good front end development can bring to a website:

Front End Design Tips

1. Appearance: Your website design is the first thing that your customer notices. It should include the latest design trends. Here are a few design trends that you must know:
a. Responsive Design
b. Fonts must be big and clear
c. Parallax scrolling
d. Eye-catching images
e. Multimedia, if necessary
2. Professionalism: It is very important for any website that it looks professional. Its audience must believe that your website is credible and trustworthy.
3. Clarity: Your website must be designed in a way that navigation should be very easy for the user. Users should get the desired page very easily and within a few clicks.
4. Page speed: The time that a page of your website takes to load must be less than 3 seconds. Any increase in the time can decrease your website traffic exponentially.
5. Personalize content: You can enhance the user experience of your website by providing more personalized content to the user. This will be helpful for you as well as the user.

The future of frontend design and development

The web design technology has been changing and evolving faster than ever before. The coding techniques are expected to look a lot different from what it is now. The differences that we see between design and development may soon fade away and merge into one unified branch, which will be reflected in the skill set requirements of these professionals too.

The companies, who are at the top of their game, have already begun to hire professionals who are good at front end development. This practice has even started to give good results to them.

About i-Verve
i-Verve is a front end design and development company which is among the earliest providers of front-end design solutions. We have a team of skilled professionals who are experts in this industry.