DonSchaefer.com

Web Design

In today's world, individuals and businesses alike often find themselves struggling to keep pace with the demands they face. Everyone is constantly looking for shortcuts that will provide them more time (whether that time is used for increased productivity, or for some much needed relaxation). As a result, more and more people are turning to the internet to provide the answers they're looking for. A good web site accomplishes just that.

From search engine web sites like Google that assist people in researching information quickly, to networking web sites such as Facebook that help people meet & stay in touch, to business & personal websites that display information about their owners, web sites are constantly saving people time as well as money. How well a site works though is entirely dependant upon the web design it uses.

Good web design is search engine friendly, intuitive, and memorable.

Web site traffic statistics prove that over half of most web site's visitors arrive at the web site as a result of a search engine. Thus, for someone concerned with attacting visitors to their web site, it becomes crucial to utilize a web design that is friendly to search engines. Often times, web design professionals are too concerned with what they are trying to accomplish visually to be bothered with this cornerstone of web design. The main concept behind a search engine friendly web design & search engine optimization is two-fold:

Since search engines (generally speaking) don't understand the signifigance of images, movies, or other multi-media, they rely on the text and coding within a web design to determine how relevant a web site is to the topic that their users are searching for. Understanding how to implement a web design that is search engine friendly is therefore crucial to web site traffic.

Once a user arrives at a web site though, it won't be long before they leave and go to another web site if they can't quickly figure out how to navigate the one that they're on. People looking to save time typically don't want to waste it figuring out how to get the information that they're looking for when they know that other web sites can provide them with the information they need. Therefore, it becomes important not only to use a web design that is friendly to search engines, but also to use a web design that makes sense to the web site's target users so that they can get the information they're looking for quickly and easily.

More often than not, graphic design plays a large role in the intuitiveness of web design navigation, while also serving to make the web site memorable and instill a certain degree of trust. In north america, people read left to right / top to bottom. As a result, a successful web design for a north american audience will start with a navigation on the left-side or top of the web design, and complete with items such as "submit" buttons to the lower right of the web design. When necessary, the visual elements of the web design (such as colors or shapes) can serve to guide the user's eye along the path to getting the information that they need. Additionally a well-designed web site has a certain look of professionalism that makes users more inclined to trust it with their information. This becomes especially important for websites trying to sell products or collect information as a means to separate themselves from the growing number of fraudulent web sites out there looking to abuse people's personal information or install viruses on their computers.