What is a pixel-perfect website and tips to build?

Are you running an online business of your own? Then you may have already heard of the term ‘Pixel Perfect Design’, but you may not be clear about what it really means and how important it is helpful for the success of your business.

Through this article, we will get a fair idea about the concept of pixel perfect. Also, you will get some insights into how the services of WP Flight can be used to build a pixel-perfect Website.

Pixel perfect website development means coding a website to match the web designs pixel by pixel. From my experience, I can undoubtedly say pixel-perfect development is a necessary skill for every Website Development Agency.

When you get a PSD/xd/Figma file on the design make sure the Designer gives you all the assets, fonts used, images with perfect pixel to the development team. I focus on using consistent sizing and spacing, and keeping the look & feel as per the design mockup. 

How to build a Pixel Perfect website?

Prepare the web designs correctly: Before going into development we would need to check whether your designer prepares pixel-perfect web designs. Otherwise, it would cause a struggle for the front-end developers when they build. For example, A margin to 22px instead of the 20px used across the rest of the web designs. Example of web design where the spacing is intended to be the same, but accidentally differs by a few pixels.

During development, we can definitely correct all small inconsistencies in the designs. It saves time for both developers and designers to agree on how to read the mistakes of the designs

After preparing the things then have a discussion with the developers on how to develop for pixel perfection.

We follow a simple 4 step process in order to create a Pixel Perfect Website.

1. Define the Design Elements that are globally available
2. Select Screen Resolution for Development
3. Implement the Design Kit
4. Pixel Perfect Quality Assurance

Define the Design Elements: Have a meeting with the Development team and the Designer to understand global elements and templates that are reusable components, if you are able to define them it would be easy to develop.

Example: If you style a button, it will have the same look everywhere in the designs and can be changed in one place instead of having to change each instance of it.

The Design Elements include:

1. Colors
2. Typography
3. Button design: Active, Hover
4. Bullet lists
5. Styles like shadows & radiuses (Button Radius and Shadow if needed)
6. Spacing between elements (Line Heights)
7. Links: Active, Focus, Hover, Visited

Select Screen Resolution for Development: What are the breakpoints we are going to develop? Is it for 1900px to 375?

• If you change the size of your web browser window, the website will adapt.
• If you change your web design file window, the elements will not change size or move around.

This difference is the source of one of the main gaps in the communication between a web designer and a web developer.

First discuss with the designer the container width. Understand the Breakpoints we are going to develop the website. (1400x wide for Desktop (with the main content container that is 1140px)

375px wide for mobile and 768px for the tablet view.

Setting the correct size of the main container is important and too often forgotten about. Many designers choose to design desktop layouts that are 1920px wide, which can be problematic on smaller desktop screens if not done right. 

Before starting development, developers should review if they understand the design system and if it’s complete for their needs. 

Implement Design Kit Page: It’s great to have a simple sample page for all basic typography and elements (like links, lists, and buttons) to review and confirm that all the CSS styles have been prepared. Add this as a default page that you reuse on all projects.

A small but important tip is to ensure you have installed your premium fonts right away with valid licenses.  The font is a very important element for any of the websites. 

If you as a developer find that something in the design doesn’t look right, make sure to ask the designer about it if it’s not obvious that it’s a design error. If an element is 2px off the grid it’s probably a mistake, but if there’s something bigger it could be intentional.

Pixel Perfect Quality Assurance: After a page has been developed, you want to check it against the design files on the provided resolutions. We love an extension that helps you to overlay your designs on the page with transparency so you can see where it doesn’t match up.

Desktop: 1920px, 2560 px and 1280px

Devices: iPhone, Nexus, iPad Air

Browsers: Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla, and Microsoft Edge.

Closing Ideas:

Though narrating this seems to be easy still it requires a lot of perfection and cooperation between the design team and developers team. Before stepping into Pixel Perfect, determine if the design is perfect to get it converted in code. Once you are sure about it, you may get it converted by giving it to the developer. However, smooth communication and understanding the role of developers and designers are important to get the best possible results.

With the best developer and designer on the team, thorough quality assurance will help guarantee that nothing important was overlooked. WP Flight has a team that can deliver the website with pixel perfection.

If you are interested in getting your designs converted into a website then you are one step away from making it come true. Why wait when you can contact us at [email protected] or ping me on LinkedIn or Schedule the call