Web marketing is a complicated beast. You have to write high-quality web content that people want to read, you have to build a vibrant presence on social media platforms, and you have to focus on search engine optimization. As eCommerce levels continue to rise -- web users are expected to spend $1.5 trillion in 2014 -- those tactics are only going to become more important.
While those methods are important, they are arguably not the most important tactics for success online in 2014. Web design is the crucial element of any successful advertising campaign this year. Quite simply, your web design is the lens through which your customers view everything you do. You can write great content, but if it's published on a poorly designed site, it won't matter.
Understanding web design is often reduced to learning code and basic design principles, but to anyone in the industry, it's a much more complex science. Take, for example, web browsers: web pages need to be designed to work with the most popular browsers. This year, that means making sure Google Chrome can display the pages you design as intended.
How Microsoft Lost the Browser Wars
Anyone who grew up alongside the internet...