Website Design

The World Wide Web has exploded and has created a new electronic market.

There is, however, a fundamental difference between traditional advertising and marketing techniques and those employed on the Internet. Success in the electronic world is directly related to your understanding of exactly what the Internet is and how it functions. This holds true whether your desire is to promote a product or simply to announce your existence to the rest of the world.

When designing for the web, whether it's information you want to give away or a product you want to market and sell, there is a right and wrong way to go about business in this new arena.

The web page is the interface between you and whoever chooses to visit your site. Websites are typically laid out with an initial page, called a home page and usually several other pages describing your product or the information you wish to convey.

Website design and development makes sites as easy to use as possible. Web pages should be easy to understand; buttons should, by their appearance, convey what will be activated if they are pushed. and, above all, your site should work smoothly and efficiently. In a society that expect fast food, fast service and fast cars, a slowly operating site will frustrate your users and cause them to quickly move elsewhere.

Although everyone will have access to your site, there is typically a particular group or target group you want to attract. Get to know this group and design your site with them in mind.

Remember, in a successful website, it's the graphics that grab you, but it's the text that does the selling.

Putting together a website requires a blend of publishing, a good user interface and technology. The three main activities in visiting a website are reading test, viewing images and interaction.

Unlike magazines, newspapers, TV shows or any other existing form of communication, the web is very limited in what it can show.

A commercial website can become an important adjunct to your company. In some cases, it will be the main way in which your customers and others interact with you in the future.

Unlike conventional advertising, a website requires constant updating and maintenance to evolve and stay current. Many websites were, and still are, designed in a way that makes it difficult to change anything. Consider also the operations aspect of the site, such as response time.

If your company is going to go through the trouble, effort and expense of building a website, you need to sit down with everyone involved in the process. Take a good look at the people using the interface. Is it easy to use and understand? If the site contains forms, do they work smoothly and are they easy to understand? Why do some sites get visited while others become lost on some electronic side street? Exactly who do you want to attract to your website? Why would they visit your site as opposed to going somewhere else?

An effective website should start with a definition that evaluates the real needs of the company and how those needs can best be served through the web, This should be followed by a careful design and planning stage. The next phase is to build and test the site.