Enhancing User Experience with SharePoint Designer

In today’s digital landscape, websites are redefining the concept of "User Experience." With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), customers have become more demanding than ever. While attracting users to your website is like winning a race, captivating their interest to explore further is a monumental task. Users are less likely to engage with an uninviting, unstructured website. Even if a site contains all the necessary information, its organization and layout play a critical role in user exploration.

To offer users greater flexibility and an intuitive experience, we turn our attention to SharePoint Development. SharePoint Designer is a powerful tool that enables the design and integration of functions within SharePoint. It facilitates branding and customizations, providing a unique site creation experience that aligns seamlessly with the SharePoint server. This is particularly important for intranet portals, where users must easily search for and navigate to the documents and content they need.

The Power of SharePoint Designer 2013

SharePoint Designer 2013 provides a unified environment for managing your site, including its lists, libraries, pages, data sources, workflows, permissions, and more. Not only does it allow you to view these essential components in one place, but it also highlights the relationships between them.

Top Features of SharePoint Designer

Design Packages:
You can import and export site design components as design packages. These packages include all branding changes made without default SharePoint design files. They also accommodate search configurations and branding templates, which must be activated at the site collection level. Importantly, design packages can be applied across multiple sites.
Device Channels:
SharePoint Designer helps to create responsive sites for various devices—desktops, tablets, and smartphones. The Device Channels feature allows a site to render for multiple devices using the same URL. It operates based on the master page and CSS files selected according to the user's GET request. This request string contains information about the accessing device, enabling SharePoint to load the appropriate device channel.
Rendering Images:
SharePoint Designer 2013 offers various methods for rendering images on websites. Display templates enhance content readability and the overall aesthetics of web pages. Document previews simplify the process of identifying the right documents, while search results can be customized through these display templates.
HTML5 Support:
Rebuilt with HTML5 support, SharePoint 2013 functions seamlessly across various browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. This allows developers to build in HTML and convert it into Master Pages or Page Layouts without the complexities of XSLT, enabling the creation of reusable templates with ease.
Custom Branding:
The overall branding can be completely customized using Design Manager Snippets and themes. These branding features aim to enhance accessibility across multiple mobile devices. Moreover, branding can be modified at any time without affecting the data or site collection.

Conclusion

SharePoint is a leading content management system that not only streamlines document management but also enhances user experience through effective design practices. By leveraging the features of SharePoint Designer, organizations can create engaging and user-friendly intranet portals. If you're looking for a SharePoint development partner to elevate your digital solutions, contact us today at 1Point1!

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