Web Design

When looking for a company or individual to assist with web design, or when using the term in simple conversation, fully take into account the meaning of the words Web Design.

All too often someone is thrown into the job of maintaining or recreating the company web site. Since most people are not graphic design inclined they will seek someone additional in their corporate structure to help out, or outsource some of the work to a local firm. However, both parties should know that web design does not stop at making an attractive face for website visitors and clients – there is another audience that must be catered to as well, the search engines.

Naturally your first steps will be to maintain the business or corporate image and retain any and all mandated logos and typefaces associated with the corporate identity. Next you will determine a valuable color pallet that allows you versatility while also keeping all of your pages and sub-domains consistent, visually. After each of the main categories of pages have been designed in flat graphical representations, you are prepared to change your course of thinking, and give up all control momentarily, handing the reigns of content and flow to a usability specialist. Take suggestions into consideration and make any lingering changes – now you are half way there!

The last stages of web design have little to do with the actual design elements and move onto the construction phase of the project. A good web engineer will be able to take your flat web site designs, slice them into shreds, and tape them back together again wrapping them in HTML, CSS and dynamic code. This stage is the most critical in keeping your site, existing web pages and newly introduced web pages in the good graces of the mighty search engines. Keeping the frequently changing portions of the content at the top of your code, and the frequently repeating elements lower or at the end of the code. Note that visually these items may be scattered about your designed pages – the code that contains your elements however is what the search engines and spiders see – not your pretty images.

Once this phase is complete, the final steps are to migrate existing content and test the web design and construction thoroughly. This step can take a few hours, days or weeks depending on the size and depth of your web site. Making certain that the site functions consistently and as expected is critical to retaining your visitors and keeping them on your site longer, and getting them the info they desire quicker.

If all of these steps are completed, congratulations – you have a viable web design and can expect an excellent return on investment from your internet marketing budget, whereas a poor design can make your visitors flee to a competitor site.