Introduction To Website Design

In this era of advanced technology online business has become very important marketing practice. People got utterly busy and have less time to buy the products by going to market physically especially in the western countries. Because of easy availability and cost effectiveness of internet, website design and development are in more demand in order to send and receive the information online, to enhance the business online and to increase the social network online.

Meaning:

The collection of information about specific products and/or services or a topic via Internet is known as a Website. It has different web pages similar to a book. A website has an address for its identity which is known as website URL and the pages within the website have sub-pages. In order to organize all the web pages and the information for making the website presentable one needs to understand the concepts of website designing.

Purpose:

The purpose of website designing may vary from organization to organization. Some common purposes are:

• To promote and sell the products and/or services.
• To generate the traffic and get enquiries from the visitors.
• To reach information or distribute documents online.
• To create social communities.

 Thus, the purpose of website design may be commercial as well as social.

Technical aspect:

This online information system is divided into front end information (like text-content, images, submit-buttons etc.) and back end (like source code written in html/xml, javascript and /or Php). The back-end information is all about the technical aspect of a website design. This comes mainly under the website development.

Generally, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks and Contribute are the application tools which are used for website design.

 Features of Dreamweaver:

• What you see is what you get(WYSIWYG)
• HTML, PHP, MYSQL code editor
• Text editor

 Features of Flash:

• Graphics animation or application development program to deliver dynamic content
• Provide embedded fonts
• Protects content from unauthorized searching or duplication.

 Features of Contribute:

• WYSIWYG editor
• FTP and site manager
• Search and replace
• Edit images
• Connects to graphics software
• Special character support
• Version and access control with rollback functionality
• Full-featured blog editing

The following programming languages are used for website creation:

• HTML
• XML
• PHP
• AJAX
• .NET

Tips for web designing:

A good website design will always depend on the goal of the website creation. Just by looking a site we cannot say that it is designed well or not, because, mere appearance is not enough for a well designed site. For example, a site has purpose of generating more enquiries and getting email address from the visitors, so the Home page of the site should have enquiry-form too and there should be "call to action" for getting attention of the visitors. The following are few tips for website design:

• The site should fulfill the main purpose of its development.
• It should be presentable, well organized and attractive for the potential customers.
• Color theme should be according to the product. (If required)
• The links at navigation bar should be easily visible and convenient too.
• There should be a sitemap for users' comfortability.
• There should not be any broken links otherwise visitors will not like to come over the site. 

Few tips for search engine friendly site:

Although website should be designed according to the users' convenience it should also be search engine friendly. If the site does not appear in search engines, how will visitors find the site? Thus the following points suggest for search engine friendly site:

• The site should not be frame based.
• Navigation bar should be at the left and top side of the web page.
• If you want to make the crawler read the content first, so leave the first block of left navigation bar empty.
• Use alt text for the images.
• Javascript and more flash make the site heavy, so these should be avoided as far as possible and should be used only when they are required.
• The site must be formatted via valid markup language.

Thus, website design requires creativity, technical knowledge and at the same time patience and skills too as it represents an organization and it is like an online identity of the company. Therefore it is quite important for the company to prepare a website that is well designed, easy to navigate, full of relevant information, having good content and capable of  attracting visitors to make them come back again.