Online marketing is synonymous with web design in that one hardly exists without the other. It would be extremely difficult for you as a web designer to survive in the online marketing world without some basic web design skills at the very least. After all, you are going to need a website to market your products or attract potential customers. You may be able to hire a reputable web design firm for them to do the designing work for you but without basic designing skills, you will still have trouble operating your site or making any changes. This might force you to rehire your designer every time you want to make changes making the cost of running the website almost exorbitant. This is more so especially if you are doing business online which might require that you update your clients constantly.
When it comes to basic web design skills, you first need to be conversant with computers in terms of education and also experience. This requires you to know how to deal with basic computer programs in order to be able to design, develop and maintain an online presence. If you are not familiar with basic computer programming, you can enroll at an accredited computer college which offers courses in basic computer science. You can also try online courses and the vast information available.
In addition to learning basic computer programming, you will need to learn the basic web design languages without which it would be extremely difficult to make changes to your site. You may not need to attend a college or pay anything for this as there are many online tutorials that will teach you the basic information you need to know about web design languages. The three basic web design languages include HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Having a basic knowledge of these languages as well as knowing how their file systems appear and operate will give you confidence to run your site. You might also want to add some knowledge on images in terms of editing, optimization and also how to use them effectively on your site.
The knowledge of computer programs, computer languages as well as image usage will prepare you enough for being able to design or at the very least run and modify your site any time you need to. To make work easier, you can consider familiarizing yourself with some of the currently available web design programs that allow you to build your site from scratch without any prior knowledge of computer languages such as HTML. These programs will even have readymade customizable templates for you to use in designing your site.
Even though learning the basics of web design sometimes seems unnecessary especially if you plan to hire a professional designer or are using the web design programs that allow you to create a website with relative ease, you are able to appreciate what you learnt when you experience problems on your site that can only be solved with web design skills.