Ever wonder how an idea becomes a web page? Ask your local web designer and you might get
an answer touting the importance of various coding languages and a little
magic. The reality is closer to a
pragmatic form of art that has developed over the past quarter of a century.
With SolTerra Communications, this process begins with a thorough
interview of the customer, much Our mission is to determine, and sometimes
help the client decide, what themes are important to the customer to make the
point that a web presence is intended to make.
Our goal for all clients would be to distill as much information about
their business as possible into the most concise package possible.
like a news reporter would give.
Another element of the interview is to organize the
information the client gives us in such a way that it’s logical and easy for
their target audience to understand. If
for example, our customer was a horse breeder, you wouldn’t want to have a
category about mares listed under information about the care of newborns; thus
putting the colt before the horse.
Once a good amount of important information has been
collected and organized, the designer begins the visually creative
process. Most business pages of today
need to follow a semi-rigid pattern of creation to allow for Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) so search engines can help potential users find your
business more easily. These parameters
can be restrictive, but also provide a set of boundaries for building a web
site that is most likely to attract customers.
With a firm grasp of SEO in hand, a design begins to draw,
quite literally, the initial sketch, or mock-up, of the sites overall
look. It’s important to create an
artistic theme that accentuates the desires of the intended design. A web page for a horse breeder should make its
visitors think of horses, for example.
The color scheme and imagery should all support the main theme, while
constantly drawing the focus of the visitor to the content of the page. A well designed page should be visually
pleasing, but not distracting.
Finally, detailed content and information are added to the
site, features are added and small design tweaks are made. Several pairs of eyes generally act as
editors to the final manuscript to make sure there are no errors and that the
page has a pleasant appeal.
Next time you are surfing the web, take a moment and try to
imagine how these design steps took place on the page you are on.