Website design

The 101 guide to professional web design

Welcome to the Website Design 101 guide to professional web design. This site aims to provide information on topics that are often forgotten or misunderstood when embarking on a web project; from assessing site requirements to monitoring success and many other topics along the way.

Below is some background to help illustrate the importance of good design but, if you're already convinced, you can jump straight to the menu at the bottom of this page.

Website design is an important part of any organisations marketing strategy but the skills required to make any website effective is about more than just designing pretty pages. Website design is, or at least should be, about generating new business.

It's all well and good paying a company to build your new website, but if no one can find it, what good is it?

If you're thinking about paying for website design, ask yourself this question:

What do I want my website to do for me?

And then ask your website design company these questions:

• Why should I get a website?
• What am I paying for?
• What can you make my website do for me?

The answer to these questions is simple. Your website design should get you new business. Not function as an attractive shop window that the occasional passer-by may look at but actually attract new customers. When you pay for your website you should be paying for this to happen.

Website design companies should be thinking from the word go about how they will maximise a sites ability to work for you and your business. How? They should be taking into account the following elements:

The target audience. Who is your customer? A website design that will be seen primarily by a young female audience should be designed differently to one for an older male audience.

What will the target audience be looking for? What is your website going to promote? If your organisations business is making bricks, there is no point producing a website design that doesn't focus on bricks.

What questions will the target audience be asking to find a business like yours? If people are going to find your new website design they will ask the same questions online as they would face to face. So what questions do they ask? Your website design will have to answer these questions.

The reason for these questions is two-fold. Firstly, by understanding the answers, the website design company will be able to create a design most suitable for your audience. This is important because bad or unattractive design is a guaranteed way of losing visitors. If you lose visitors, you lose potential customers and that means your website is not working.

Secondly, by knowing who to target, the website design company can tailor the content to respond well in search engines. Search engines are the number one source of traffic on the internet and without designing for search engines from the ground up your website will be dead in the water. Every word on every page should be placed with both user and search engine in mind. Using this approach, your website design company should be able to ensure your site receives the exposure, and visitors, it deserves.

The above, simple rules will go a long way towards ensuring your new website design will not only appeal to visitors and search engines but will actually drive targetted customers to your online web presence.

The key to successfull website design is working with a design company who understand you, your visitor and how to translate this knowledge into a website that brings you business...

According to Nua the number of worldwide Internet users will reach 1 billion by 2005. Such an enormous potential audience helps illustrate why effective website design is so important.

If you're considering embarking on a new website design project browsing the following guide should help you gain a more in-depth understanding of the website design process.

The information in the following website design guide is not designed to teach you which software to choose for website design or how to use that software. Information on that is available through the help files of the most popular website design programmes such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe GoLive.

The guide should however help ensure the success of your web site, whether you are building it yourself or having it commissioned, by providing an in depth, step by step guide to the common pitfalls, general considerations and lesser known facts associated with professional website design.

Use the menu below to jump to specific areas of interest or get started with the first installment in the Pre-Design phase.

If you want further proof why the design of your website should be considered as important as any other part of your marketing mix, browse this excellent artice from New Media Review illustrating worldwide internet usage patterns and demographics.

Mighty Media are a full service multimedia company and have employed an in-house team of website designers since 1997. Our practical, marketing oriented approach to website design has resulted in numerous site launches that succeed in driving qualified, targetted leads to our client's businesses.

Mighty Media is regarded as one of the premier Buckinghamshire website design agencies with a track record in corporate communications that forms the underlying foundation of their work.

Established for over 25 years, Mighty Media began making TV commercials and later diversified into the corporate video production sector working with household names such as Procter & Gamble, Mars, Nationwide Building Society and other familiar names. With a strong background in internal and external communications Mighty Media progressed into new media production. Mighty Media now specialise in CD-Rom design and production, e-learning solutions, intranet design, extranet design, video production and website design.

Based in Bourne End on the border of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire Mighty Media now provide website design and online marketing services to businesses from all over the UK.

• Amersham, Ascott, Ashendon and Aylesbury
• Beaconsfield, Bellingdon, Bourne End, Buckingham and Burnham
• Chalfont, Chesham, Chorleywood, Cliveden, Cookham and Cores End
• Denham and Desborough
• Flackwell Heath and Furlong
• Gerrards Cross
• Hambleden, Hazlemere and High Wycombe
• Iver
• Lane End
• Marlow and Milton Keynes
• Primrose Hill and Princes Risborough
• Slough, Stoke Mandeville, Stoke Poges and Stokenchurch
• Taplow
• Wooburn and Wycombe

• Bedfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire
• Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall and Cumberland
• Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset and Durham
• Essex
• Gloucestershire
• Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire
• Kent
• Lancashire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire
• Middlesex
• Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland and Nottinghamshire
• Oxfordshire
• Rutland
• Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey and Sussex
• Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire and Worcestershire
• Yorkshire