The Basics Of Web Design
Web design has played a massive part in our society for over ten years. The web design industry has created jobs, opportunity and even new words in the English dictionary. Web design to some people may seem utterly confusing, there are technical phrases and words that people will not understand and it does take time to get use to everything.
When a business or individual is considering getting a website created for them the first things you would think of is, where do I start? There are so many options for people to choose from out there and it is extremely over whelming to get into.
So, this article is a really rough sketch on the basics of web design. What it means, how much does it cost and what to be aware of! Firstly, web design and graphic design are two very different things. Graphic Design could anything from illustration, Logo Design, brand identity and advert design. Web design is strictly net based and will consist of a website built in 'code'.
The best place to start in terms of finding someone to build you a website would be Google or Yahoo! Both of these search engines are extremely relevant and accurate to services out there. If the web design agency is listed highly within Google you can tell that the company your looking for is aware of online internet marketing and they know what they are doing. Once you have made your search engine search within Google or Yahoo! you can then click on the most appealing listing and look at the agencies website. First things to look out for are a contact telephone number (displayed clearly) and in-depth information on clients they have worked with before. Even look out for customer testimonials as this will give you a relevant idea on who they have worked for before hand. If a web design agency does not display their prices on their site it is not necessarily a bad thing, normally companies who do display their prices on their site are companies who are just starting out or freelancers.
Once you contact the web design company make sure they treat you with respect and not talk down to you just becuase you are not ‘savvy’ with the web. They shoudl be polite, understanding and cater to your every need. There is no reason why they shouldn’t be. If you have all of these basics in place you are not far off getting yourself a good looking site to advertise with! So get cracking!
Design Is Changing – Keep Up!
It is intriguing to see how web development has moved on over the last few years especially. The internet has turned from a niche for brochure-ware and intranets into one of the biggest software development environments in the market over just a few years. The web as a platform is a hollow dream no longer – you can now run and develop a web application without needing to host any sort of web page yourself and you can even get the data from a wide variety of other sources. Web development has created jobs around our country which is positive. Just watching the TV for five minutes these days is depressing enough – no jobs, un-employment crashes to a new high and the recession just gets deeper and deeper.
Changing web development can be challeging. When designing a site you now need to consider cutting edge graphic design and logo design. Simply building some for the web is no where near enough anymore, people want the full package. Unless you have a very compelling product or idea most clients will already have something in place web wise and chances are they have already spent a lot of money on it. Maintaining a website is much more common these days than creating something innovative. Yet in today’s modern web society just creating a site is not enough. You want to able to get your site seen. How do you do that? Keeping on top of web trends is understanding the logistics of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Search engine optimisation is fundamentally tweaking your website to be visible with search engines such as Google and Yahoo! If you can get your site seen by these search engines the amount of revenue and visibility you can get from these search engines is incredible and it can completely revolutionise a business’s income.
So what about the future? Well if I knew that I would be on a hot beach somewhere soaking up the sun. However what I will say is that the way some web developers deal with market forces and business people is wrong. What matters these days is how fast you can do the project and how quickly you can get it to market. This goes against what I believe in as a web designer and I think businesses should stand up and fight against these ‘quick wins’. What do you think?