Competitor Research
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 | Art, Design Inspiration, Web Design
Following on from our stock art related articles, web design enthusiasts can help create their own unique and well balanced web designs with a varied use of unique stock art pictures. However, if you are unsure about how to start off with this, or how your project is developing with its imagery, look and feel you may wish to try checking out your competitors. Having a sneak peak at what other people are up to in the world of web design and development can help inspire you and give you ideas for your own unique imagery. Have a look at other web developers and see what kind of pictures they typically use for certain concepts. What kind of image are they representing? What idea of the business do you get from the overall design of the website as a whole?
When designing any concept for web design you need to think about your target audience and at the same time, how the client wishes their business to appear. They can choose to be bold, exciting and innovative which will require bright, artistic illustrations and innovative design features. They may want professionalism to be a high priority in which case smooth website transitions, professional sleek and simple logo designs and simple toned down colour combinations work well. Your website design may have the younger generations in mind which will need funky colour schemes, interesting imagery and probably lots of pictures of rebellious teens, graffiti and other features to keep them entertained. If the business wants to be cute and fun and is aimed at kids primarily you need bold simple cartoon imagery with simple bold colours, lots of interactivity and above all an extremely user friendly interface.
All of these should be bringing up different images and pictures in your mind to suit the situation. Even if you envision a woman with a head set for the help page, a ten year old user isn’t going to be impressed with it. Instead a cartoon figure, bubbly question mark or the website “mascot” would be much more entertaining.
Do some thorough research on your client’s business, the website target audience and what kinds of imagery other competitors are using. Never copy another web developers work, but you can use it for ideas and inspiration to get you on the right track.
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