A good web designer will understand the factors that influence website performance. These include user side or audience factors such as download speed; users PC, tablet or mobile performance factors, such as browser capabilities, cache memory and processor speed. The web designer should also take into account server side factors such as server bandwidth and processing power for PHP/ASP Code and database transactions. These web site factors will influence the performance at maximum load and the site’s ability to download images, flash and video streaming satisfactorily
Security of the site is an important aspect of a web site design that a web designer and the company commissioning cannot ignore. The risks, such as hacking, virus attack, personal data theft require security protection mechanisms, such as firewalls; use of Secure Socket Layers (SSL/https) and strong passwords for site access.

A good web designer will spent much time identifying the client’s web site need. A good analysis of the nature of interactivity that is required eg online database transactions, payment provision and also the user needs eg image quality and download speed, level of security, development timescale, on going support and maintenance and the final cost. The web designer will also investigate the visibility level on search engines required; end user need eg appropriateness of graphics and responsiveness of site. Use of design tools should also be evident for concept designing eg mood boards, story boarding
These days there are many turnkey systems which require very little technical knowledge until you want something a bit different. For this the web designer needs markup languages skills i.e. HTML and client side scripting languages such as JavaScript, and Jquery; and good knowledge of cascading style sheets (CSS) for good presentation.

When developing a web page a good web designer will always keep the page’s SEO keywords in their mind.