Thursday, October 2, 2008

Web design and SEO

By Ben Fouche

Web design is a art that became very competitive today. Most people who are computer literate can design a website today. There is a huge variety ofsoftware packages which make it easy for specialists as well as inexperienced designers of websites. So to say anyone can these days create and develop a well presented website. Well designed an productive websites that which will attract clients are not always that easy. Important facets of the web industry like database applications, e-marketing tools like seo, banner advertising, flash, etc., need to be incoporated to present a well sructured website.

Web design is aimed to create web pages and websites in such a manner that it is suitable for interpretation and can easily be displayed by a web browser.Web design can be effectively used to attract clients or customers to your website and web pages.Web design can be seen as an art or skill when properly applied.Website design involves not only graphic design skills but also includes other Internet and IT technology skills.The ability to navigate easily through a website is definitely obtained by lots of experience and skill.

Web design is in many cases a hobby that becomes a part time money earner and sometimes a full-time profession. Web designers should train themselves to become skilled to provide a wothy product to potential clients. Someso to say webdesigners cause a lot of damage to the web design industry. Customers are getting the wrong impression of web design an the power of this great marketing tool. Websites can be designed with static pages but also includes dynamic and interactive pages in which case different users can access the web pages and database of such applications.

A website is therefore not only a collection of information about a particular topic or subject, but rather a combination of professional web design , IT, database, Internet and other business skills like marketing and accounting knowledge.Proper web design can be the one big factor attracting customers to your business. A fine balance between a good looking website, functionality and professional search engine optimization is probably the secret of the success of many succesful websites.

The index page of a website is normally the homepage. Landing pages, sometimes called slashpages are used as intoductional pages in some cases. Attention of a clent get drawn by these pages and then get diverted to the main application or page wher the sale is converted. Web designers will design a home page or splash page in such a way that it will draw attention to specific areas, but also in a way that the rest of the website's pages can easily be reached. Navigation menus are normally used in web design to visit other pages which are linked to each other in a specific website.

The URL or the web address is the main navigational item an refers or index each page on the internet where it can be found. Different pages and formats like HTML, PHP, images , video, audio and other objects get linked or can be referred to by these web addresses. Websites are the final products of web design and is the result of the combined skills of more than one person. Webmasters normally control and combine these different skills. Webmasters combine the different skills of graphic designers, database experts, marketing specialists and other to compile the final product before it is published to a server on the Internet.

Web design and web Seo can actually not be seperated. The main object to create a website is obviously to draw attention to your organisation or to generate sales. Websites that are not properly optimised for search engines are therefore useless and a waste of time and money in most scenarios. Optimised websited are efficient mareketing tools when utilised properly. In South Africa we have seen a positive move towards the internet as a marketing tool in the last few months. - 15275

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