Archive for September 2011
Web Design – Project Lifecycle
The process of designing and developing a website can be quite overwhelming and challenging. A lot of thought, effort and discussions lead to the launch of a ‘perfect website’. Knowing how hard the entire process is, it will be a good idea to divide the website development process into different stages. This will also lead to effective team management and proper control to achieve maximum quality. Following are the steps of a web design project lifecycle:
1. Analysis
Why do you need a website? Make sure you have an answer to that one before even thinking of going further. It is particularly important in the case of Business Websites. A business must analyze why it wants a website (a business model) – to promote the business, generate revenue or offer support to customers. The website is going to a part of the system. How the web based application or website will help the existing system or the business should be basis of the analysis.
After analyzing requirements from a business perspective, it is then time to focus on user needs. Make sure you can clearly classify your target audience and establish functionalities the user will require. Never assume that you know what a customer wants. In fact it will be a good idea for a business to consult actual or potential users and discuss key factors that might affect the website (from a client’s perspective).
Input: Interviews with clients, supporting documents and mails, discussion notes, model sites etc.
Output: Cost, Size of Team, Hardware-Software requirements, supporting documents, approval, work plan
2. Specification
A ‘functional’ specification is a blueprint or a detailed plan of the website. After carefully considering business and user requirements, the next stage will be to form a website specification. What should be included in the menu, how content will be structured, how tasks should be generated etc. are some of the questions to be answered at this stage. A designer gets information on what should be presented and the programmer concentrates on functionality. Prototypes, mocked up web pages or illustrations of how a website will work are also prepared at this step.
3. Design and Development
Drawing from the information gathered in the above two stages, it’s time to determine the look and feel of your site. The web designer will create one or more prototype designs for your web site. A lot of suggestions and changes to be made are exchanged between the client and designer at this stage. Design is concerned with how the website looks and if it fits the client requirement. User Experience (UX) and Usability both come into play here. And once the layout/design is finalized, it will be safe to move to the next step of developing. The developmental stage is the point where the website itself is created. The developer takes all graphic elements from the designer and uses them to create an actual functional site. Developing requires a lot of technical knowledge and programming. Content writing for the website is also done in this stage. You can hire professional content writers or write the content yourself.
Close interaction between the design and development team is necessary at this stage. A well designed functional website should be the ideal output at this stage.
4. Testing and Delivery
At this stage, the entire web development team comes together to have a close look at minute details and test the website. Following is a checklist of things to test on your website before launching/delivery: (there are various tools and testers available online)
Web Design – Importance and Usability
Web design is the process of visualizing, planning and designing up of electronic media content by using Markup language and graphics on internet. Built with the purpose to market the goods and services, web site designs have become a modern day symbol to attract internet users to come and avail the services. This whole marketing process includes building concepts keeping goals in the mind, inspection of corporate image keeping in mind the brand promotion of the services being offered and providing the relevant content to give important market ruling information for users.
Web designing also includes many technical factors as to give a shape to your concept. It is a kind of an advertisement that needs to be effective and attract a large number of people to increase the sales aspiration of the website owner.
Benefits of a Web Site
Web design services are the ultimate solution for advertising on the internet. A web site is the perfect way to attract users who are beyond the geographical boundary. It reflects all the necessary and vital information about the company and reflects the aims and aspiration of the company in effective manner. Having a good web site also gives you benefit to increase your web presence and help you to enhance business profitability. One of the major benefits of making a web site is conveying of goals of the business.
For availing the right kind of web site design services, certain considerations should be made seriously. One of the importance points to keep in mind is the choice of information and layout. Layout is important as it gives the first positive impression on the onlookers. It is our tendency that if we like the outer part, chances are that the inner pages will be seen too. Therefore, it is necessary to make the home page really attractive and interesting to catch eyes.
Content is also a very important part of a web site. Infusing interesting and usable information will help in holding on users as the main purpose of internet surfing is seeking information and increasing knowledge.
A web site must be properly placed. It simply means that information must be given according to its relevancy. Unnecessary information must not be included and proper spacing must be maintained to balance the page.
Web Designing India
India has been a hot destination for providing services like software development, web designing, web development and others. Web designing India has become the answer for all web development solutions. Many big corporations are forwarding their works to India to get the specialized and skilled services to get the bets work done in a tight time frame. Web designing India is not glowing but also capturing a major part of the country’s economy.
Web Design – Advanced Ideas
In web design, there are a number of things that need to be considered, such as ease of use and how fast the web page loads. The use of white space is important, too, as is the use of bullets and elements like bold and italics. White space is the space surrounding the text – everything on the page that isn’t words or visual elements. By allowing enough white space on a page, the eye will be able travel across the page more easily, thus assisting the user in more easily finding the information they seek. Further, by utilizing things like bullets and bolded text to delineate various sections of text, you will draw the visitor’s eye toward that which you want them to see most. In the same way, organizing text in short paragraphs will increase the readability of your site.
There are standard conventions online for things like hyperlinks, and you would do well to follow them. By indicating a link in typical colours (such as blue), you will be eliminating the guesswork on the part of the users. Similarly, don’t overuse underlining on your site, as underlined words are often construed as being hyperlinks. If a user can’t click on an underlined word, they may think it is a “broken” link.
In essence, the goal of creating a user-friendly site is to reduce the amount of guesswork and effort required of visitors to your site. Content should be succinct, easily navigable, readable, and well-organized, and visitors should have access to you via an email address or other means in case they have questions. If you consider all of these things, you’ll have an effective site that will keep visitors coming back again and again!