WEB DESIGN

Although the terms web design and web development are often used interchangeably, there are some significant differences between them.

Web design refers usually to a design of a website which usually refers to the front-end interface through which the public interact with your business online.
The choice between a website and a web application is usually determined by the functional requirements and purpose of the site or application for your business.

Websites are typically informational in nature with a limited amount of advanced functionality. Simple websites consist primarily of static content where the data displayed is the same for every visitor and content changes are infrequent.
More advanced websites are not a static page or a digital showroom anymore but increasingly an interactive communication tool with customers and as a result fully fledged units of the business which may sport features such as interactive content, social media, Flash, E-Commerce, Content Management System (CMS) etc.

Website design and development encompass a vast array of skills, tools and technologies. True, with only cursory skills, virtually anyone can create their own website. But a truly engaging, effective and productive website requires much more and the reason to use a professional partner.

Internetwebbureau provides web design of websites which are customer-focused that brings you more business. We design new websites or redesign existing websites.

We focus in particular on the following:
 

•   Content

The information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the right audience that the website is concerned with.
We understand the personal approach to which the web user best responds. The viewing and reading patterns of the savvy web user vary greatly from those of a casual reader. The delivery of your written message must be succinct while being engaging and informative in order to reach the right web audience.

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•   Functionality

A website should have all the functionality to meet the requirement specifications and the purpose of visitors like: one-click-purchase, direct subscription for a seminar, event etc.

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•   Appearance

Creating the right appearance (look and feel) for your website and giving it the professional appearance it deserves, is one of our guiding design directives. Studies show a website's appearance is one of, if not the most important aspect influencing a visitors decision making process. The look of a professionally designed website builds confidence in visitors, confidence that you provide a quality product or service, encouraging them to become, not just visitors, but clients.

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•     Graphics

Graphics and text should include a single style throughout the site. The style should be professional, appealing (good design speaks louder than words) and relevant.

Communication is an art not limited to words. Professional illustration and photography enhance a website's quality and engages the viewer. The proper illustrations and photography support your message and further inform the viewer. The internet is a visual medium. Quality visuals are a must.

Read More > Services Graphic Design

     

•     Flash

Flash is a way to embed graphical, interactive, animated or other rich content like audio, video into your website like the Home page. It is widely used throughout the internet and allows websites to display graphical rich content that downloads quickly. This is opposed to regular web page content, which consists mostly of text and individual images.

​A well designed and implemented Flash site can be both entertaining and informative.

You don't have to build a Flash only website to reap it's benefits. We create Flash components for any website, generating visual interest that keeps your audience's attention and your website fresh.

 

Flash technology also goes beyond the visual aspects so commonly thought of. Flash's capabilities extend into the realm of website applications and data delivery.

​With a Flash animation it is easy to feature multiple items in different sequences or scenes of the animation. It is a very effective use of space.

​Some websites like to turn their navigation links into Flash content. With Flash the links can be a bit more animated, and show more interactivity than your ordinary graphical or text link. We can also design Flash navigation links for your website.

 

But Flash is not for every website. Search engines rely on the text of a website in order to rank that website. Without this text, such as with a Flash website, the search engines will not be able to read your website, and thus will not rank your site well.

 

•   Usability

The site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable. This will result in higher conversion.

Website usability is an often overlooked and little understood area. Have you ever been frustrated by being unable to find what you're searching for on a website? Usability impacts how long a visitor stays on your site, if they find what they're looking for, if they will return, and if they make a purchase.

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•   Visibility/Findability

The site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search engines and advertisement media.

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•   Conversion

The site should convert the visitor into a customer which results in higher Return On Investment (ROI).

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• Compatibility/Compliance

 

•     W3C

Web governing organizations, such as the W3C standards, define best practices and standards that should be used when building websites to ensure maximum current and future compatibility.

Internetwebbureau designs standards based websites so that your website is compliant with such industry standards.

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•     CSS

One of the most important recommended guidelines is to build websites using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) based layout, instead of table-based layout. Using CSS to design a website will make it much more compatible with devices now and into the future. For example, a CSS based website is much easier to display on different types of devices such as cell phones and PDA’s. Your website will also be much more likely to display properly on future devices, not yet invented, that are designed to display CSS based layouts.

 

CSS web design also have other advantages. A CSS based website is much easier to update if you ever want to make a major design change in the future. The reason is that CSS designs separate the content portion of the website, from the design portion of the site. So you can easily change the design to something completely different, without having to touch any of the content at all. This separation of design and content is what makes CSS websites so powerful that you can easily change the design or layout of a page depending on what device it is being viewed on (computer, cell phone, TV, etc).

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•     Browser compatibility

HyperText Markup Language 5 (HTML5) is basically a cleaned up version of (X)HTML, and is now the recommended standard for building websites. When we build our website, each page will be checked against an HTML5 validator to make sure it is in compliance with these standards.

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•   Blogs and Forums

Discussion forums have been around for quite some time, and lately it’s new cousin, the blog, has become very popular.

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•     Blogs

A blog is simply an area of your website that you post information to, and then allow users to reply or comment on what you posted. Usually a blog is displayed as a list of articles, arranged chronologically, with a headline and text for each article. At the bottom of each blog article, you’ll typically find links to view the comments posted in reply to the article, as well as other related links. Blogs are typically updated quite frequently: hourly, daily, or weekly depending on the nature of the content.

Websites use blogs for many different purposes. Some sites use blogs to post updates about a product or service they offer. Others use blogs to provide commentary or news on a particular subject.

 

•     Forums

Discussion forums, also known as web forums, are very similar to blogs. Whereas a blog usually concentrates on a single topic, forums usually have multiple topics. Each topic is like a single blog onto itself. As with blogs, forums allow the user to post replies or comments in response to a forum article.

Discussion forums are very popular with software companies who often use forums to support their products since everyone can contribute to help solve a given issue.

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•   RSS Feeds

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a popular way to automatically send updates to users who have subscribed to your RSS feed. RSS feeds can be read by most modern web browsers, or by software designed to specifically read RSS feeds.

For example, all the major news sites provide RSS feeds for their main articles. You can subscribe to such a feed directly using your web browser. Your browser then periodically checks the feed for updates, automatically downloads the new articles, and then notifies you that updates are ready to view. So in essence, new information is automatically sent to you.

Your website can publish an RSS feed to send information to subscribers. 

 

Conversely, you can add content to your site automatically by subscribing to and embedding an RSS feed into your website. Say, for instance, that you want to show recent news headlines related to your industry. You can find an RSS feed that publishes this information, and then automatically embed it into your website. So users will see the articles that are sourced externally, directly in your own website. This is a good way to add external content to your website.

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•   Dynamic Websites

First generation sites, created strictly with HTML and referred to as static sites, had to be updated manually, page by page. If you wanted to freshen up the look of the site or add a new section it was costly and time consuming. The more pages the bigger the problem. Those days are long gone thanks to dynamic website design.

 

A database driven website is called a dynamic website since the content is updated dynamically from the database, rather than manually by a person. For websites with a large volume of content, or content that needs to be searched or sorted by criteria, a dynamic database driven site is usually required.An online store, for example, is almost always database driven since it is much easier to find products according to the users search criteria.

 

The reason why a database driven web site is so powerful is because it is very easy to update content, or add new content to the website as it's all done automatically and instantly by retrieving information from the database and constructing a new web page when one is requested. This makes it very easy to create a large amount of web pages automatically.

 

Internetwebbureau has extensive experience in developing databases using e.g. SQL Server, MySQL, Access and Corvid (Wix coding). If you have a project that requires a database, then we can design the entire database for you, and then integrate it into your website. Or if you have an existing database, we can integrate it into your website as well. Combining a database with a website is one of the best ways to create a highly sophisticated website.