Web help and advice - Comment archive

Return to comment archive index
 

April 2009

Quality web design on paper

We're always telling people that a good quality web design is about more than just looking good on screen: it's about looking good on screen, the right structure, well targeted content and good technical implementation. But it is easy to forget the importance of how good your site looks on paper too.

Clearly a lot of people overlook what your website looks like when it is printed out, but it is a shame to see a page of a carefully constructed web design come out as illegible rubbish when it comes out of the printer. Try it - in Microsoft Internet Explorer click on the drop down to the right of the print button and select Print Preview. If you're lucky, or your web designer has given this some consideration, then what comes out might be clean and legible, but more often than not it can be a dreadful mess, certainly not the kind of thing you want your customers looking at - and you'd be surprised how many people print out web pages for reference, reading off-line etc.

Now, there isn't much you can do with some of the very oldest browsers that some people use, but most browsers support separate stylesheets for screen and print. These stylesheets could let you come up with a totally different design on screen and on paper, but in practice at WebSanity we like to 'clean up' any issues that don't translate from screen to paper. For instance: remove navigation sidebars, remove large blocks of background colour, make sure the Copyright message appears on the printout along with the web address etc.

If you want a quality web design in Huntingdon, need an effective website in Peterborough, or want to improve the quality of your existing web design in Cambridge then get in touch - at WebSanity we don't just care how your website looks, we care about what it delivers.