TDI | Outsourcing | Edinburgh: Website design

Website design
================================================================================
Marat Bekmetov on 08 March, 2009 04:19:00
 
Website design (along with web hosting) is the most sought after web service all
over the world. Websites that have a professional look and presentation stands
better chances of online success.
Website design definition by Wikipedia:
Web Page design requires conceptualising, planning, modeling, and executing
electronic media content and its delivery via the Internet using technologies
(such as markup languages) suitable for rendering and presentation by web
browsers or other web-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
WEBSITE DESIGN MISCONCEPTIONS
*"This is all about creating a nice looking website with cool graphics".
*Well, think of who is your audience and what you want to impress them with. If
you look at amazon or Ebay - they are not that graphically intence, because
their purpose is to provide a facility to trade and not to impress with
graphics. 	*The site may be good looking, but amount of graphics can stall
performance, or quality of coding can be poor.	*Site may be graphic-rich, but
with a little 'indexable' content and therefore a low value in the search
engines 'eyes'.
*"This is all about coding"
*Good coding is a must, but you do not want have a brilliantly coded website
that is just ugly or plain. It is obvious to a trained eye (or sometime even
untrained eye) that a site has been created by programmers with no touch of a
graphic designer.	*Pure coding does not address a 'marketability' of the site:
positioning of elements and words used to deliver that message (call for
action).
*"This is all about online marketing and showing our products"
*Common mistake is to stuff everything on the homepage (this will take long
time to load and often not easy to navigate / find information).	*Creating a 3
page website will not help your search engines strategy - search engines like
content-rich sites with something of a unique value.	*Your marketing efforts
will be in-vain if the site is cluttered or badly coded.
CONCLUSION: Web design is a combination of the above three: (a) visual
presentation, (b) sound coding, (c) clear message to your visitors with a
fool-proof navigation and SEO.
For more information on our past website design projects see
[Portfolio/Experience] section of this website.