Website Design: Some Basics
A new field of study that has grown extremely important in the past twenty years, in today’s job market website design is something that everyone should at least know the basics about. Designing a website may seem like a daunting task if one has no experience with it, but in reality it is not so different from designing the interface of a traditional book, combining text and graphics in a user-friendly format. There are a few things to keep in mind when undertaking this task, outlined below.
The first step to website design is to identify what the purpose of the site is. Whose it website for? Is it providing information? Is it selling a product? Or both? Answering these questions and keeping a clear idea of the website’s potential audience throughout the design process is particularly useful when questions come up later in the future. Goals can be set ahead of time to decide not only the initial design, but how regular the updates should be.
The bulk of the work in website design is actually drafting the web content. This will refer back to the purpose of the site. One should write the content with this audience in mind. Is it a younger audience that will prefer more graphics and flashy components to the site? Or is it for a more literary crowd that will simply want well-written content? Either way, the information should be broken down into eye-catching small pieces, to keep the audience’s attention.
Usability is another important component in website design. The different pages of the site should connect together, with easy and obvious linkage to navigate in between them. The general rule is to keep the navigation capabilities as simple as possible. Visibility is important as well, and one should think of ways to ensure that their website shows up in search engines so that people can see all the hard work you’ve put into the site.
Graphic design is the final component of website design, one that goes hand in hand with the well written content. Both of these should work together to achieve the websites purpose. In the initial planning, decide the sort of look you are going for, and choose fonts and graphics carefully so that they go along with this look and tone of the site. Generally, more simple designs are easier for web users to navigate. A basic look with a few touches of flair is usually the way to go. However you go about it, the look of the overall site should be consistent.
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