Web design is a creative art. We’ve all experienced situations where we’ve been wowed by a site with an exceptionally creativity design or functionality. However, we’ve also had frustrating experiences with sites that try too hard to buck the trends and wound up being very unusable. In web design and development, creativity and innovation need to be able to work in harmony with usability, not restrict it.

As a designer there’s always that desire to step outside the box and create something truly unique. However, there’s a fine line between positive creativity that will enhance a website and negative creativity that will complicate usability and confuse visitors.

Blending Creativity and Predictability

In my opinion a website doesn’t need to be creative (in terms of design and functionality) in order to be successful. One of the most obvious examples is Craigslist. The idea behind the site and what it accomplishes for visitors are far more important than the look of the site, however, a high-quality design can certainly help.

Those websites that do display creativity and innovation also need to find a way to incorporate predictability for users. Your website’s visitors are going to be impatient, so it’s critical to not make them think or work any harder than necessary if you want them to stick around and take any action.

The predictability is not so much an issue with the design itself, rather with the use of the site. But a design can help or hinder the predictability in a number of ways.

Many web designers fall into a trap by pricing their services lower than they should, which can have a serious impact on their business. Here is a quick look at the many different ways that under pricing your services can hurt you.

Lower Income

Obviously, charging lower prices will mean that you’ll make less from each project. Of course, the mindset of many designers is that they can ultimately make more money by charging lower prices and attracting more business. While that can be true in some cases, it will require you to work considerably more hours to earn the same amount that you could make with higher rates.

Attracts Bargain Shoppers

Many potential clients will contact designers based on their prices. From my experience, if a potential client mentions that they’re contacting you because your prices are low, this is a very bad sign. These types of bargain shoppers can be some of the most difficult clients to deal with. Sure, I understand that business owners need to be wise with their expenses, and that includes the amount that they pay for a website. However, these types of clients often don’t understand the huge gap in quality and types of services that are available. They want an award winning website for a thrift store price.

After you complete a website do you review the project and try to measure the results? Was the project successful or a failure?

I have built my share of websites, both for myself and for clients, and find that measuring the success for these can be very different.

It is easy to measure the success of my personal websites. Before starting a new project I set some pretty clear goals, and I’m usually one of the two people involved in building the website so it easy to measure my impact on the project and whether it reached its goal. I usually measure my performance using the following metrics:

Traffic levels
I’ll often measure the success of websites on the traffic levels they achieve. Metrics such as monthly page views, and unique visitors, to RSS feed subscribers are often a good measure of success. When I started Design By Grid I wanted to build a resource for other designers, so I set myself a target of 500 RSS feed subscribers in the first 6 months.

The process of developing a website can be long and tedious, but the end result should be rewarding. As a web designer it’s very easy to spot sites that were well-thought out and others that were not. Throwing something together too quickly without much of a plan leads to a lot of redesigns and mistakes. I’ve narrowed down my design process into five basic categories. This helps me organize my thoughts in order to optimize my work flow. Here’s my 5 steps…

Well at FreelanceSwitch we don’t shy away from the pressing questions. So as the kicker for a new series on how to get more freelance work, we have put together an enormous list of ideas, ranging from ones that take 10 seconds to 10 days. There’s something for everyone to try and I guarantee there will be plenty of things you never thought of.

Over the next few months we will be publishing an article on EVERY single one of these topics, so if you need more explanation or examples on any of them, don’t worry they’re coming!

And now without further ado, here they are, your 101 ideas:

As web designers, it's impossible to deny that electricity lies behind everything we do. There is no physical alternative—no part of our job—that is entirely free from energy consumption.

While there's much debate and controversy and differing statistics concerned with the issue of climate change, there's one point upon which everyone agrees: reducing the energy that you consume is both good for the environment and good for your wallet.

Sure, we're all aware of the usual commonsense stuff—take public transport or ride your bike instead of driving, wear a jumper instead of turning on the heater ... but there are also specific measures that we web professionals can make.

Here are ten tips that you, as a web designer, can employ to reduce your carbon footprint.