1. What is sought to design a Web site?
Let’s see what our goals when designing a site are.
Observe first that in personal computers, many things are similar. Different programs work similarly. Typically the first item in the menu bar is “File …” or “File …”, and the last is” Help … ” or “Help …”. This is because little by little, people have grown accustomed to working in an environment like that; he is comfortable moving from one program to another and learns to take advantage of new features.
In the World Wide Web, a very similar process occurs. Almost always there are buttons “Home” button to send an email to the designer or maintaining the page, a table of contents, etc…
What happens is that when a person first arrives at a site, there occurs a very rapid process in which a person learns to navigate. This occurs in the first 2 or 3 minutes, and it is crucial that the learning is as expeditious as possible for the person who comes. Many sites even provide a help page that explains what kinds of navigation aids are used and how to move properly. It is therefore important to adhere to the “standard”, at least in terms of structuring the content and try to produce a website that responds to the features the average user would expect.
Also, people are much more accustomed to books, in which information is presented in a linear, hypermedia navigation that requires greater attention by the user.
The Web design process that should have a series of steps intended to transform pieces of information scattered, or in the best set of structured information in a linear fashion, on a site that makes users feel comfortable and find what you are looking for the fastest way possible.
Finally, let’s see what things are most often complain of Web users
- Transfer rate
- The ability to organize the information down (download) to your computer
- Time lost in finding what they want
Against the second item there is not much you can do, not to worry unless you are offering information to be downloaded to the user’s computer in the form of an archive or something similar. Against the first and third item if much can be done through careful web design.
2. Web design stages
Here are some suggested steps to efficiently design a site; you should not start writing one line of HTML code before completing the first stage.
1. Delimitation of the subject
This is the crucial step; you define what is going to try the Web, which things to include and what not. It is also the time to define both the audience (usually more than one) and goals (trying to prioritize between primary and secondary objectives).
If not adequately assessed the amount of time available versus the amount of time required to develop a site of desired magnitude, the result can be disastrous. Many Web projects fail because they begin to grow and grow their specifications, without any back a tidy work content constraint.
Note the following: most of the sites that are awarded honors as “Best of …”,” The best site of the week …”, “Top 5% of the Web” are sites dedicated to very specific topics. People do not want a lot of sites that have references to other places, people are looking for content.
2. Information gathering
At this stage information is collected to be put on the Web, according to the specification made in the previous stage. It is convenient to associate with someone as a “content provider” because as I mentioned before many people even though he has an aversion to computers and you have valuable and interesting information. Organizations generally produce large amounts of information, also in this stage should define how much of the historical information that is no longer relevant, will be included in the website, for example, you can define the information of more than 3 years old will not be included, etc.
3. Aggregation and description
Once we have the information that will go on the site, we can start an appropriate classification. Here we must find an appropriate balance between the linear and hierarchical.
We apply linear type classification pieces of information that require a person that reads it slowly progresses in the knowledge of something, like a book. Usually a page will, using a similar technique FRAMES or if deemed appropriate. We apply a hierarchical classification of such pieces of information that are complementary or dependent on one another, such as sections and subsections. Usually we will put on different pages.
It is important here not to focus on a unique way of classifying documents. A series of descriptors must be defined. Also, a document can belong to several values of the same description. If at this stage we are arguing about whether an item of information is on one side or another is that we are making a mistake: should be in every place where a reasonable user would expect to find it.
4. Structuring
At this point it is structured the way they bind to different pages, according to the aggregation of content made in the previous stage. It provides support for the navigation of links that allow the ranking we design and links between elements of the same hierarchy if desired.
It is also important to provide indices for each descriptor that has been designed.
From this point on you can work on HTML implementation itself.
5. Metaphor
There are many pages that we hope will be accessed from different parts of our service (for example, a glossary or help.) Perhaps somewhere in the document mentioned to another page and it would be interesting to the user could click on that reference to go to the page you’re referencing.
This stage is called “metaphor” as it lets you refer to the same entity (in this case, an HTML page) in different contexts. These pages should be designed carefully since it will be important to users by allowing them to “jump” into the site from logically remote areas.
6. Design and graphic style
Appropriate graphic style can be somewhat important when making the person feel comfortable visiting us, and as a way to lighten the content and make it more digestible. A site for more content that is if you have a good graphic design difficult to achieve a place among other sites the same type.
As the number and size of images, we must adopt a balance. There are sites that rely almost entirely on large, slow GIF images; others are quite poor as they are almost only text, which are untapped multimedia methods. The scheme to be adopted (which is somewhere in between) varies from designer to designer and is an important consideration.
Another important point in the definition stage of the graphics is to try where possible to maintain some consistency graph, and dare to innovate in terms of it. A background color, background, or an interesting distribution of elements within a page is something not easily forgotten.
7. Final assembly
At this point we specify the design, the latest links are necessary and add the graphic style pages, the site is assembled with a cover that is able to present in a single physical page at least the most relevant site, is installed links to the author’s personal page and / or email address.
8. Testing
Finally, it is necessary to review the overall coherence of the site, which links have not “broken” that lead nowhere, to review the wording and spelling of the pages, make the adjustments necessary to separate the pages that are too large on smaller pages.
For this stage, it is best to try to find users who will use the site in practice, and if that is not possible, put in place for people to see the documents, and follow the steps we assume that they will continue.
Author BIO:
Khan Baba is one of the Enthusiastic and innovative writers for last 15 years and currently working as business Writer at in Dubai Brand Stallion
