Web Design

Making a great web site is much more than just coding HTML. You need to be successful at presenting your ideas in an interesting manner, whatever your topic may be. Ignorance may be bliss for the one who writes the web site, but that's rarely the case for the one who visits it. If your site looks unprofessional, so will your reputation.

Stages of web site design

Typically, web site designs evolve. In the beginning, many web site owners become enamored with "bells and whistles" that, on the surface, might appeal to their target audience. Flash movies, Java applets, animation and other rich media has become increasingly popular over the years.

However, in the rush to have the "coolest" site design, web site owners forget whom they are designing their site for: their target audience. Your audience might find that Flash movie irritating after viewing it multiple times. Your audience might not be able to find your site in the search engines. "Bells and whistles" are attributes of a web site that need to be measured and tested to see if they increase or drive away sales.

Below are the various stages of evolution web sites typically undergo:
1 - Style Over Substance
2 - Designing for Online Visibility
3 - Designing for Your Audience

1 - Style Over Substance
The first stage is to design a site that the CEO, venture capitalists, and ad agencies like to see. There are all types of "bells and whistles" in this design. An entire site might be a Flash site. Or there might be some beautiful JavaScript mouseover effects or drop-down menus in the design. It's always a pretty design, but the message is clear -- style over substance.

2 - Designing for Online Visibility
In Stage 2, the reality of an ineffective web design begins to hit, usually around 3-6 months after the initial launch. A site will typically get rejected by many of the major directories, not be indexed by the major search engines, or not get the traffic or sales that were projected based on the various types of marketing strategies used. Typically, that's when companies decide that they will try to hire a professional online marketer to promote the site. Doorway page companies, in some way, shape or form, rear their ugly heads.

Unfortunately, many web site owners fall for a doorway page company's pitch because the beautifully designed site couldn't possibly be the problem with low site traffic. Yahoo might have rejected a site, or the site might have been listed in Yahoo and the company cannot understand why they have no description next to their company name. But in no way would many ad agencies or doorway page companies want to tell potential clients the truth -- they simply did not design and write an effective web site -- because it would mean losing thousands of dollars in business.

3 - Designing for Your Audience
After spending an exorbitant amount of money on pretty web site designs and various marketing strategies, web site owners generally figure out that they did not design or write an effective Web site for their target audience.

Typically, web site owners will bring in a usability expert to analyze potential problems and present various solutions. Bringing in a search engine marketing expert to help with search-engine friendly design templates early in the design phase can save a company thousands of dollars in online marketing costs.

Rules of web page design and layout

Web site should be easy to read
Web site should be easy to navigate
Web site should be easy to find
Web site should use web friendly colours
Web page layout and design should be consistent throughout the site
Web site should be quick to download

Need more info: http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html
http://www.webreference.com/

Resources

Layout Designing
This will teach the basics plus a whole lot more to help get you on the road to creating, designing and implementing solid designs for the web! ...
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/designconceptsclass.htm

HTML
Free html tutorials from industry experts. ... The weekly newsletter provides the
latest html information. http://www.htmlgoodies.com

CSS
Save a lot of work with CSS! ...
http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp
http://www.dynamicdrive.com

Java Script
JavaScript.com is your gateway to all things JavaScript. Featuring javascript tutorials, free java scripts, tools, and links. ...
http://www.javascript.com/
http://www.dynamicdrive.com

Few major areas to take care

Body: The BODY of a web page contains the document's content. The content may be presented by a browser in a variety of ways. You can think of the BODY as a canvas where the content appears: text, images, colors, graphics, etc.

Domain: On the Internet, a domain is a network address. This is similar to your home's address used by the postal system. The mailman can deliver our mail because we have a unique address such as 2275 Beverly Lane - Clearwater FL 33764. On the Web, each site has its own unique address also, so that Web servers can find it. These domains are also referred to as "Dot.Coms". Our domain here is www.profitgate.net.

Frames: In a Web site, frames are the multiple, independently controllable sections on a Web presentation. This effect is achieved by building each part as a separate HTML file and having one "master" HTML file identify all of the parts. Surveys of users indicate that many people do not like sites using frames.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format): One of the two most common file formats for graphic images on the World Wide Web. The other is the JPEG. On the Internet, the GIF has become the standard format for images.

Graphic: (or image) In computers, and on the Internet, a picture is generally referred to as a "graphic" or an "image".

Heading: In all web pages, the "heading" is at the top of the page and contains basic instructions needed by browsers to decode the page and present it to the user's computer. The most important of these instructions is a tag identifying this as a web page: <html>

Home page: For a Web site developer, a home page is the first page presented when a user selects a site or presence on the World Wide Web.

Hosting: Hosting (also known as Web site hosting, Web hosting, and Webhosting) is the business of housing, providing a server, and maintaining files for one or more Web sites.

HTML: (Hypertext Markup Language) is the set of markup symbols or codes inserted in a file intended for display on the World Wide Web. The markup tells the Web browser how to display a Web page for the user. Each individual markup code is referred to as an element or tag. HTML is a formal Recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is generally adhered to by the major browsers, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator, which also provide some additional non-standard codes. The current version of HTML is HTML 4.0. However, both Internet Explorer and Netscape implement some features differently and provide non-standard extensions. This makes building web site very challenging, even for the professional.

Hypertext: This is what makes the Web work. Hypertext is a link between some text at point A, and something related to this at point B. For example, you might have a word like automoble (point A) - linked to a photo of a particular car (point B).
Hypertext was the main concept that led to the invention of the World Wide Web, which is nothing more (or less) than an enormous amount of information connected by an enormous number of hypertext links. The term was first used by Ted Nelson.

.jpg or JPEG: (pronounced JAY-peg) A graphic image format. When you create a JPEG, you are asked to specify the quality of image you want. Since the highest quality results in the largest file, you can make a trade-off between image quality and file size.
Together with the Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) , the JPEG is one of the image file formats commonly used on the World Wide Web, usually with the file suffix of ".jpg".

Keyword: 1) A word (or more commonly, a phrase) that is used to search the Internet, via a search engine, when seeking a particular type of information.
2) A word or phrase used in search engine optimization of a web page, soas to make the page easy to find in search engines.

Search Engine Optimization: means ensuring that your web pages are accessible to search engines and focused in ways that help improve the chances they will be found. Search engines are one of the primary ways that Internet users find web sites. That's why a web site with a good search engine listing may see a dramatic increase in traffic. Everyone wants that good listing. Unfortunately, many web sites appear poorly in search engine rankings, or may not be listed at all, because they fail to consider how search engines work. Knowledge of "search engine optimization" can help many of these sites.

Web design: The arrangement and creation of web pages that in turn make up a web site. There are many aspects to this process, and due to the rapid development of the Internet, new aspects are continually being added. As far as business oriented web sites go, the basics currently consist of (in order of importance):

a) The "visibility" of the site on the Internet, particularly within the major Search Engines.
b) The informational value of the site, from its target public's point of view.
c) The aesthetic / professional appearance of the pages.

Webmaster: A Webmaster is a person who either:
a) Creates and manages the information content and organization of a Web site;
b) Manages the computer server and technical programming aspects of a Web site
c) Or does both.

Companies vary in their use of the term. In a smaller company, a Webmaster typically "does it all." In a larger company, a Webmaster tends to be someone with either a writing and/or graphics design background who has acquired Web site creation skills (mainly knowledge and experience with HTML) or a more technical person with some programming skills.

Webpage: On the World Wide Web, a page is a single file written with the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Usually, it contains text and specifications about where images or other files are to be placed when the page is displayed by a browser. A webpage (also spelled - Web page) is part of a Web site.
You can think of a Web site like a book that arrives a page at a time as you request each one. Each page of this book is an individual HTML file with its own Web address.

The first page you usually request at a site is known as the home page. (Most home pages have a default name like "index.html" that doesn't have to be specified; you only need to enter the domain name for the site itself.)

With frames, multiple pages (HTML files) can be downloaded to a browser and presented on designated sections of the display screen at the same time.

Web site: (also called a site) A Web site is a collection of Web files on a particular subject that includes a beginning file called a home page. For example, most companies, organizations, or individuals that own Web sites have a single address that they give you. This is their home page address. From the home page, you can get to all the other pages on their site.