Web Site Design

The first step in designing any web site is to analyze your needs and goals. What you intend to do and why, what technology and content you'll need, how long the process will take, what you will spend to do it are some of the questions to be answered. To create a substantial site you will need content experts, writers, information architects, graphic designers, technical experts, and a producer.

The fundamental organizing principle in Web site design is meeting users' needs. Ask yourself what your audience wants, and center your site design on their needs. The information in the site will have to be genuinely useful to your target audience, meeting their needs and expectations without being too hard to use.

If you have in mind a body of information to put across to your reader, you probably have a mental organization for it. Normally this is a sort of hierarchical tree, like the chapters of a book. Keep this structure. It gives them a feeling of knowing where they are. You can also use this structure for organizing your files in directories.

Users don't just look at information, they interact with it in novel ways that have no precedents in paper document design. The graphic user interface (GUI) of a computer system comprises the interaction metaphors, images, and concepts used to convey function and meaning on the computer screen.graphics are integral to the user's experience with your site. Graphic design creates visual logic and seeks an optimal balance between visual sensation and graphic information. Without the visual impact of shape, color, and contrast, pages are graphically uninteresting and will not motivate the viewer. Visual and functional continuity in your Web site organization, graphic design, and typography are essential to convince your audience that your Web site offers them timely, accurate, and useful information.

Web sites vary enormously in their style, content, organization, and purpose, but all Web sites that are designed primarily to act as information resources share certain characteristics.All Web sites are organized around a home page that acts as a logical point of entry into the system of Web pages in a site.Unless your site is small you will probably need a number of submenu pages that users enter from a general category listing on your home page.The Web is a bidirectional medium — people expect to be able to send you comments, questions, and suggestions. Always provide at least one link to an email address in a prominent location in your site. You can request user information and feedback using Web page forms and then use a database to store and analyze their input.

One of the interesting aspect of computing technology is the ability to combine text, graphics, sounds, and moving images in meaningful ways. The promise of multimedia has been slow to reach the Web because of bandwidth limitations, but each day brings new solutions. Although there are numerous methods for creating Web multimedia, use stable technology that works for the great majority of client machines.

Actual data transmission rates will vary depending on the user's modem, Web server speed, Internet connection, and other factors, but the more graphics you incorporate, the longer the reader will have to wait to see your page. Because of the bandwidth issues surrounding networked delivery of information and because image files contain so much information, Web graphics are by necessity compressed. Different graphic file formats employ varying compression schemes, and some are designed to work better than others for certain types of graphics. The two primary Web file formats are GIF and JPEG.

After web site look and feel, as the page grid, page design, and overall graphic design standards graphic or audiovisual content for the site created, start research, writing, organizing, assembling, and editing the site's text content. Database design and data entry, and functional programming to process data also should be completed.

Once the site has been constructed, with all pages completed and all database and programming components linked, it is ready for beta testing. Only after the site has been thoroughly tested should you begin to publicize the URL address of the site to a larger audience.

Don't abandon your site once the sie is published. The Web site need constant attention and grooming. Adding the new content, maintaining the graphic and editorial standards, and assuring that the programming and linkages of all pages remain intact and functional are required. Links on the Web are perishable, and you'll need to check periodically that links to pages outside your immediate site are still working.

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