Tips on Designing a PSD and Turning It Into a Functional Website

A common perception is that: website creation has become a piece of cake with the 'n' number of website builders available online. But, that's a wrong notion! There are a lot of things that we need to pay attention to when it comes to building a website. Sadly, most of us, become too overwhelmed with the number of options available online and add unnecessary bloat to our website.

Design and functionality are essential ingredients of a good website. In fact, a website is incomplete without any one of these elements. When it comes to creating a design, most of us (if not all) prefer creating a PSD, but there are several challenges we need to conquer, in order to produce a successful outcome.

In this post, we'll throw light on a few simple tips on designing a PSD and converting it into a good-looking and functional website.

Is Your Design Engaging The Users?

Every website requires an attractive and user-friendly design. Well, you cannot expect a boring web design to bring traffic to your website. In fact, this is the most crucial element as it serves as the first point of contact for your users. So, when creating a Photoshop design make sure that it is good enough to draw users in; this involves a lot of factors:

Begin With Sketches: Planning how your design is laid out beforehand help you spend less time in fiddling with the layout. You can create some rough sketches of the layouts. And then, later turn those sketches into a Photoshop design. You can even take print out of your sketch sheets, so as to discuss about the project details with your client.

Setting Up a Grid: Now that you've finalized your PSD design, you should create a grid, as it serves as the foundation of a solid design. Moreover, grids help in making the design more consistent and proportionally right. You can choose from any one of the popular grid frameworks such as 960.gs or Skeleton to get your job done.

Be subtle: Many web designers often tend to overlook user's ability to perceive the effect that they're trying to achieve with their design. And as a result ends up creating a layout that contains too many elements, harsh gradients and use contrast in excess. It is important that the PSD design should contain a perfect blend of effects and other essential elements necessary for a website.

Creating Layer-Based Slices

Once we're done with a PSD, we proceed with slicing it. In order to spend less effort in this process, you should create layer-based slices. The best part is that these slices does not involve creating a box that you need to draw manually, rather it automatically conform to a layer's bound. You can create a layer-based slice in Photoshop editor easily. Doing so requires you to choose a layer in the "Layers Palette". Next, move to the menu and from there choose Layer->New Layer Based Slice.

Note: This also works in case you've selected multiple layers. In such as case, each layer will be converted into its own slice.

Organise your PSD

Naming PSD layers and putting them in a folder might appear bothersome to you. However, an organized PSD leads to a successful outcome. In fact, a well-structured and nicely organized PSD file help boosts productivity of both the coder and layout designer. Wondering how? It saves you from spending time in finding any particular text layer, graphics layer or any other important section. And thus, give time to developer to focus more on production. By naming the layers when creating a Photoshop design will help you in organizing your PSD easily. This even helps to find your design elements in an easy manner and navigate throughout it without any hassle. And so, organizing your Photoshop design will help boost your productivity and streamline your workflow.

Choosing The Right CMS

Luckily, for people with little or no programming knowledge, WordPress happens to be an amazing website building tool that can be used to build a high-quality and functional website. There are dozens of pre-built themes to choose from, and there are thousands of plugins that can be used to embed some great features and functionalities into your website. Besides, WordPress comes with a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for the users to maintain their website and its content, even without some developer's aid.

Bringing a Professional On-Board For Custom Website

Converting a PSD design into a WordPress theme can be a daunting task, especially for non-programmers. So, you can think about hiring an expert having enough experience in PSD to WordPress theme conversion. Make sure to evaluate your choice of service provider before finalizing them. First off, check out their portfolio to get an idea of the kind of work they have done so far. You can even ask them to provide details of a few of their clients whom they have worked for in the past. Also, make sure to discuss about the development cost, in advance, to avoid any last minute hassle.

Let's Wrap Up!

Are you thinking of converting your PSD to WP theme? Well, then before jumping to the conversion bandwagon, it is recommended that you should give due consideration to the aforementioned key points. Doing so, will help you carry out the conversion in the most effective and efficient manner possible