Web Sites

Pre-Design Process

Designing a good website is a difficult task especially when the definition of a good site is a subjective matter and people's opinions vary. But no matter if your site is the most aesthetically pleasing or not, if people can not easily find the information they are looking for then they will likely become frustrated and leave. So in the pre-design process of building your website it is important to know your objectives, to know your audience, and to decide on a design method.

Know ultimate objectives

When designing a webpage or anything for that matter, it is important to have a full understanding of what you want to do and why you are doing it before jumping in. Doing so will make the process easier because you will be sure of what you want to accomplish with the website. Probably the most important objective is making information the user is looking for easy to find. "Remember, if somebody is visiting your site, they are probably looking for something...try to make it easy for them to find it" (Mackenzie, 1998). There is nothing more frustrating than going to a companies' website looking for specific information about the company and not being able to find it. If for some reason a user cannot find the information they are looking for, it is always a good idea to have some way for the user to contact you to get the information they want.

Know your audience

Another key factor to take into account in planning your website is who your audience will be. It is important to do research to find out who the potential users of your site will be. The knowledge, background, interests, and needs of users must be taken into account in the pre-design process of your website (Horton & Lynch, 1997). A well-designed website will appeal to a wide range of users. You want your front page to be visually attractive enough to get casual surfers interested, and have some sort of statement or declaration of what your site is about. But at the same time you do not want to have too many graphics that will slow down load time and upset an experienced or frequent user of your site that is just looking to get information quickly. If you are designing a website for your company then the audience is likely to be mostly customers and people who are looking to get information about your company. So it is important to cater to these people by presenting a professional looking website.

Top-down and bottom-up web design

When planning the layout of a website, most often top-down or bottom-up design is the method used. Both of these design methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

The top-down method of web design is when you have what you want the overall final product to look like, usually actually drawn out, and you do your best to create your vision. The process usually starts with designing the overall site and then focusing on the individual pages. This method requires more time before you actually begin building your site but it pays off when building because you know exactly what you want the site to look like in general. While this method does usually make for a well organized structure to a website, it is important to not disregard content. If the actual content on your pages is weak then it does not matter how well your site is designed, people will lose interest.

The bottom-up method involves starting with a certain idea or objective and building your site from there. At the start this method focuses more on the actual content of your webpages and then later tries to link it all together well. While this method of website design requires less time for planning, it does make the time for the actual building of the site longer because it is less organized at the start. The important thing to keep in mind when using this method of web design is to be consistent with the design of your pages and to be sure everything is linked well. If your site has good content but the user can not navigate around your site easily to find the information they are looking for then they will likely become frustrated and leave.

No single method of web design is necessarily better than another. It is just a matter of personal preference when deciding on how to design your site. However, no matter what design method you choose, you must know what your objectives are and who your audience will be. You need to have your information easy to find and have your site appeal to a wide variety of users (Kaiser, 2002).

Site Design

To design an effective webpage, one must first focus on the development of a website. A website is a collection of webpages and multimedia files, and is stored on a common server. It is granted public access, allowing internet users globally to view files on the site. But in order to design an efficient website, a developer should know a few tips that will increase efficiency and viewer satisfaction.

Improve download time

To begin with, a developer must respect the website's download time, or the amount of time needed for a browser to open the file. If a file takes too long to open, the user may become impatient and halt the transmission. Developers realize web surfers greatly value speed, so have therefore reduced the average page load time over a fast connection from ten seconds to 2-3 seconds (Lewin, 2002). Loading a page in this timeframe requires efficient coding, and forces the developer to utilize a simple filing system. Download time is extremely important because in order to meet your customer's expectations, a developer must meet these time goals.

There is a language for everyone

According to a website's needs, a developer has many possible programming languages to use. The most popular language used in website design is Hypertext Markup Language, or commonly known as HTML. This popularity of HTML is present because of its download rate, simplicity, and compatibility amongst various browsers. However, developers have alternatives to use in lieu of or in conjunction with HTML.

First, FLASH is an interactive language developed by Macromedia, Inc. It allows designers to easily generate complex animation and eye-catching webpages. Macromedia has developed a simple program for creating FLASH applications, allowing users to develop their own projects on a familiar windows interface; no hard-coding is required. But despite its obvious perks, FLASH applications are slow to load. Not only does each application take