How website design works:
WHY DO I NEED A WEBSITE ANYWAY?
Designing a website is a lot like designing a brochure for your company, group, or for yourself. The principal intent of a website is almost always to sell something. Whether you are selling goods, services, or just selling yourself as an expert on any given topic, websites exist to provide information about you to the world. Much of the information that ends up on websites is the same information that would go on a brochure, flyer or other paper advertising medium. The Internet provides a great platform for you to get that information to the masses quickly and relatively cheaply. 95% of the ENTIRE WORLD has Internet Access now, and recent polls have shown that, given a choice, 75% of those with Internet Access would prefer to do business, buy, sell, read, and discover new ideas online. Quite an audience.
ARE WEBSITES EXPENSIVE?
Websites, compared to traditional media (advertisements, directory listings, paper marketing materials, etc) are cheap to design, maintain and market. Depending on your exact needs, simple informational websites can be designed by a professional for anywhere between $250 and $1000. As with any other service, the more complex your needs, the greater the design will cost you.
CAN I DESIGN MY OWN WEBSITE?
Designing your own website is a great way to get to understand the intricacies and eccentricities of the World Wide Web. If you have some technical know-how and are a bit daring, the world can become your canvas...or you could pull out all of your hair by the end of the project! Professional Web designers are plentiful these days, and as we are certain you remember from Economics 101 -- The Law of Supply and Demand: the greater number of web designers on the market, the less it will cost you to find a designer to get the job done. There are a great number of tools with which you can design your website...most of them WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) enabled. Programs like Microsoft Front Page and many others will allow you to point and click your way to seeing what your site will look like. Kind of. Most often, self-designed sites take on a cartoon-looking appearance, with difficult navigation and poorly-designed structure and lack the basic elements that a professional web developer can provide.
WHY DO I NEED A PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE DEVELOPER?
There is much more involved in creating web presence than just designing a web page with your company logo and and a few sales phrases on it. The creative web professional is compelled to include coding for search engine optimization: meta-tags (keyphrases and descriptions that do not appear to your users, but are in the "code behind the pages" of your site for search engines to be able to correctly categorize your site), proper use of key phrases in your page content, proper linking of pages together, and a great many other search engine necessities. All the while, it is imperative that the website be visually appealing and that the user is able to easily find the information they need, or more importantly, that the website owner can drive the user to the proper information that is needed to sell the product or idea that the website is promoting. In addition, there are often databases connected to websites that can provide many features to the owner fo the website such as the ability to record and maintain lists of potential customers who have contacted them through the website. Databases are also often used to provide the owner of a website to completely control all site content, layout, and even create new pages and sections all with a few simple mouse clicks. While linking a website to a database is not all that difficult for an experienced web programmer, it can be quite harrowing for a novice with limited database and web development experience.
OK, SKIP TO THE GOOD PART...HOW DOES WEBSITE DESIGN WORK?
First of all, let's define some simple concepts: websites are nothing more than a collection of text files that reside on someone's server that has a name and number registered on the Internet so that everyone can find it easily. Websites, or what you see of them at least, are ALWAYS programmed in a language called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). There are many other programming languages that can be used in conjunction with HTML to provide other features (like database connectivity and other, more advanced concepts), but the website that you see through Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or whatever browser you use is ALWAYS coded using HTML. Web programming languages like PHP (Hypertext Pre Processor), ASP and ASP.NET (Active Server Pages), Cold Fusion and a multitude of others offer features that allow a competent developer to design web-based software to meet any business purpose, and often times those programming languages are capable of building web pages from entries in a database, but the output that everyone sees is in....you guessed it...HTML.
A Web Design Professional (a good one, at least), will follow a simple procedure for bringing your ideas to the web:
- DETERMINE THE CLIENTS' NEEDS:
Sometimes, believe it or not, web professionals can forget that what the client wants is what the designer should do. Yes, there are times when, as a web design professional, you are compelled to offer better suggestions for material, content and
layout than the client wishes. But in the end it is crucial that the web professional remember that it is the customer who knows what they want...So, most web designers will learn as much as they can about the customer, their business, event, products, or ideas before even suggesting a layout or theme for the website.
- EXPLAIN DOMAIN NAMES AND OFFER DOMAIN NAME SUGGESTIONS:
Most clients are not familiar with the concept of domain names and how they work. Most do not and never will care. it is the responsibility of the web professional to guide the client as to the selection of a domain name that accurately reflect the theme of the website. However, almost EVERYONE these days
is familiar with the concept of www.something.com being a website address. While the .com, .net, .org or .whatever domain name that is assigned to a website provides an easy way for the Internet Public to find your site, it is not always necessary to have a domain name for your site (although it is HIGHLY recommended). The Domain Naming System (DNS) provides for number-name pairing for domain names.Every computer or networkable thingy has what is called an IP (Internet Protocal) Address in the form of aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd. In fact, the IP address you are using right now is: 38.107.191.104.
At any rate, a good web professional will offer some guidance as to the selection of a domain name.
- OFFER A DETAILED PRICING QUOTE:
That's right...DETAILED. It's tough to buy something that is packaged when you do not understand the package it comes in. A good professional website designer will itemize your costs for you to make it more understandable. Besides, it is simply good business practice to do so. After determining what the client needs and wants, then weighing all the best options for the client, the designer should provide a detailed, itemized quotation for the work to be done including a timeline for completion of the work. The Pricing quote should include (along with explanations):
- Domain Name Resigtration costs
- Hosting (the computer that serves up your website) fees
- Website Template design or customization fees
- Hourly costs for website design and programming
- Any other recurring fees (like maintenance contracts, etc).
- PROVIDE GRAPHICAL LAYOUT SAMPLES:
Here's the fun part...everyone wants to be a designer, and this is the opportunity to feed that need. Colors, photos, fonts, menus...all put together to represent the needs of the client and their business or idea. Here's the catch: almost NOONE knows exactly what they want. The diligent web design professional will provide the client with several options that reflect everything they have learned about the client and their business in Step 1. The result is less client head-scratching and more timely project updates!
- OBTAIN THE CONTENT INFORMATION:
"What do you want to say about your business or idea on your website?" Now, this is the tough part. Ask someone what their business does and they can usually tell you accurately in one sentence what they do and/or sell. That presents an interesting challenge to web designers. Web design professionals are faced with the task of providing the public with enough infomation to be convincing, but not so much that it drives people away. While the bulk of the content should definitely come from the client themselves, often times it is necessary for the web professional to become a sales associate of sorts and generate some interesting content that will compel the user to buy...whether it is a product or an idea they need to buy.
- KEEP THE CLIENT POSTED AS TO THE PROGRESS OF DEVELOPMENT:
This is crucial...at least for the client. Website design, depending on the complexity of the design, can take weeks or even months to complete. It is a VERY good practice to make sure your clients are in the loop. At Swordfishlabs.com, for example, we employ an online Project Management Solution that provides our clients with real-time updates as well as a working example of the site's design...usually at yourdomainname.swordfishlabs.com. This way. clients can see the site's development as it happens.
- FINISH THE WEBSITE TO 100% COMPLETION:
As strange as it may sound, many web designers will leave some minor details hanging for some time. It is very easy to do. "Change the color of 2 words of text on the 23rd page of the site" can easily slip through the cracks. A good web design professional will keep atop of all the minor and seemingly incidental details of a website project and see them all through to completion. That includes: email setup, Control Panel Training, and several other details.
A competent professional can make designing and implementing your website a pleasurable and rewarding process. For more information on having Swordfishlabs.com design your new internet presence, please contact our website sales department. |
