A website is your digital address in cyberspace and it has to be done right for the process to bear results. Before you embark on building a website, it is highly suggested that you plan the entire process and include all elements to be dealt with. The attempt here is to touch upon all aspects when you seek to have a website of your own. It is meant for someone who has no coding or design or technical skills.
To give you some idea, you need to have knowledge about colour theory, human interaction pattern with websites, the primary idea of coding languages (HTML & CSS), basic programming skills in Javascript, grasp of Content Management Systems (CMS). You may not need expertise on these subjects but an overall awareness. You would then understand the process and the difficulties coders and designers encounter while creating websites. This makes your life easy since you understand what is going on. The article will play out as a rough guide to building a website:
Be Prepared to Repeat: Creating the website is not the end of the story. You have to find the sweet spot between what is the most efficient and practical. If anything does not work, it has to be replaced and nothing is to remain sacred. There are bugs to be fixed, change parts that don't fit the overall scheme and remain updated to emerging trends. All these have to be done if you have to have a standard website that doesn’t disappoint. Running a website is an iterative process - you look after, update, maintain, and repeat all over. You never stop learning is the key to staying relevant.
Content Does Matter: Website creation need not start with graphics and this tendency has its demerits. Content creation needs to take priority, this means text, photos and contact info. Designers are happy to fill the website with dummy text to give the ‘feel’ of what it would look like with content. Giving weightage to content in the planning stage makes for good content. Eventually, your audience is drawn to the content with design complimenting it and not the other way around. This approach helps deal with issues of space on the website and is seen as a pragmatic approach in preventing bugs.
You have to understand that the internet is mostly text unless the purpose of the website is to promote visual elements. Text is involved in each of these aspects whether it is descriptions, arguments, reviews or testimonials. This makes text pivotal to the aesthetics of the website, choosing the right typography helps in keeping the website neat & readable.
Optimize for Different Screens: Today, there is a range of devices with access to the web. This makes it necessary to have your website cater to all distinct screen sizes. It is definitely not easy but is worth since increased accessibility translates to higher traffic and more transactions.
Most smartphones today offer touchscreen interface and the buttons for navigation has to be created with practicalities in mind. The links and buttons should be designed for easy navigation and a simple tap by the fingers should do the job. The gist of the argument is that user experience with the website will vary and you need to be prepared for it.
Skills Required: If you remember, the article speaks about different skills that are required for building websites. Here we will look into those skills in brief:
Testing: Once the website is in place, start testing on different browsers and you would encounter bugs. Do not go after small inconsistencies, ensure users have access to all information. The goal is to have good visibility and remain readable, which is in line with the eventual goal to inform, engage and drive people to take action based on what they have seen.
Get Feedback: You cannot improve unless you have made mistakes. Ask the ones familiar with web-design, what works and what does not. Get critical feedback on the website you have helped create, it will help you improve - if you are open to receiving unbiased constructive feedback.
Final Thoughts: Designing and building a website requires quite a number of skills. By having knowledge of all the above-mentioned elements you would have an understanding of the complexity involved. By being amidst the process of creation, your knowledge of the process would further evolve to give you better insights into making the website better. By repeating this pattern, you would have a better judgement on things and would even anticipate an emerging problem before it actually materializes. This is the process that has created self-made entrepreneurs in due course.
To give you some idea, you need to have knowledge about colour theory, human interaction pattern with websites, the primary idea of coding languages (HTML & CSS), basic programming skills in Javascript, grasp of Content Management Systems (CMS). You may not need expertise on these subjects but an overall awareness. You would then understand the process and the difficulties coders and designers encounter while creating websites. This makes your life easy since you understand what is going on. The article will play out as a rough guide to building a website:
Be Prepared to Repeat: Creating the website is not the end of the story. You have to find the sweet spot between what is the most efficient and practical. If anything does not work, it has to be replaced and nothing is to remain sacred. There are bugs to be fixed, change parts that don't fit the overall scheme and remain updated to emerging trends. All these have to be done if you have to have a standard website that doesn’t disappoint. Running a website is an iterative process - you look after, update, maintain, and repeat all over. You never stop learning is the key to staying relevant.
Content Does Matter: Website creation need not start with graphics and this tendency has its demerits. Content creation needs to take priority, this means text, photos and contact info. Designers are happy to fill the website with dummy text to give the ‘feel’ of what it would look like with content. Giving weightage to content in the planning stage makes for good content. Eventually, your audience is drawn to the content with design complimenting it and not the other way around. This approach helps deal with issues of space on the website and is seen as a pragmatic approach in preventing bugs.
You have to understand that the internet is mostly text unless the purpose of the website is to promote visual elements. Text is involved in each of these aspects whether it is descriptions, arguments, reviews or testimonials. This makes text pivotal to the aesthetics of the website, choosing the right typography helps in keeping the website neat & readable.
Optimize for Different Screens: Today, there is a range of devices with access to the web. This makes it necessary to have your website cater to all distinct screen sizes. It is definitely not easy but is worth since increased accessibility translates to higher traffic and more transactions.
Most smartphones today offer touchscreen interface and the buttons for navigation has to be created with practicalities in mind. The links and buttons should be designed for easy navigation and a simple tap by the fingers should do the job. The gist of the argument is that user experience with the website will vary and you need to be prepared for it.
Skills Required: If you remember, the article speaks about different skills that are required for building websites. Here we will look into those skills in brief:
- User Experience (UX) Design: This is about a user’s individual experience when it comes to interacting with a desktop, website or an app.“Does this website give me value? Is it easy to use? Does it offer a pleasant experience?”. Questions like these guides a UX designer when building a website. This is about knowing how people use websites and using that knowledge for a superior site design. It is based on putting yourself in the user’s shoes and making sense of what works best. Easy of use, perceived value of the website, utility, efficiency in performance are some of the drivers of UX design. Websites today are complex and feature-rich and making them easy and pleasant to use make them stand out.
- Aesthetic Skills: The picture that you prefer might be a turn-off for others. Aesthetics is a tricky affair and is quite subjective. However, knowing the basics about aesthetics will help you make good decisions on design. You would make cohesive content choices to create a functional and appealing website that will be engaging.
- Typography: The internet is text-based, it is all about words. Typography is not just about picking up the right font for the website. Rather it is about usability. You have to choose the right font types and the right font sizes to make your website readable to the majority of people. There needs to be the accurate font size for titles and headings to create a visual hierarchy for the website to appeal to a large number of people.
- Colour theory: The gist of this theory is the interaction between colours. It is the art and science of using colour. It explains the visual effects of how colours mix, match or contrast with each other. In the long-term, people choose and reject products based on colour. The same can be said about website when there isn’t a coherent usage of colours. Colour theory helps demystify the proper usage of colours. In the long-term, this knowledge help in taking decisions pertaining to the branding and marketing of your website.
- Programming Languages: There might be a few, who after learning programming might set out to design their own websites. However for the majority who might not be conversant in programming an understanding of how programming works would serve them better.
- Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) - It that tells the browser whether it is looking at a text, image, a link or a video. You browser than translates it into what you see on screen
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - It helps make the web-page look pretty. In deals with colours, layout and fonts. Basically how the layout would look and the size of the buttons etc.
- Javascript: It helps manipulate the content on your website in ways HTML and CSS cannot. Helps build fancy slide shows and improves website usability.
Testing: Once the website is in place, start testing on different browsers and you would encounter bugs. Do not go after small inconsistencies, ensure users have access to all information. The goal is to have good visibility and remain readable, which is in line with the eventual goal to inform, engage and drive people to take action based on what they have seen.
Get Feedback: You cannot improve unless you have made mistakes. Ask the ones familiar with web-design, what works and what does not. Get critical feedback on the website you have helped create, it will help you improve - if you are open to receiving unbiased constructive feedback.
Final Thoughts: Designing and building a website requires quite a number of skills. By having knowledge of all the above-mentioned elements you would have an understanding of the complexity involved. By being amidst the process of creation, your knowledge of the process would further evolve to give you better insights into making the website better. By repeating this pattern, you would have a better judgement on things and would even anticipate an emerging problem before it actually materializes. This is the process that has created self-made entrepreneurs in due course.
-------Sujit Susheelan
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