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Important components of every web site design.

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What are the important components of a web site or the components of a good website?

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Understanding important website design components

There are numerous design components used to build a website. Understanding what they are and how they affect your website, can help you to decide which design options are most important to you and your company website objectives. We always try to explain technical concepts with easy to understand terms and descriptions. However, the importance of understanding these components and how they can affect your website's performance, requires that we provide a few more technical explanations on this page. If needed, please follow the high-lighted terms links to read their definitions and explanations.

Most business websites are designed using either static html or dynamic web page generation. For the purposes of this page, we will concentrate (mostly) on the most common ( static html web page ) website design structures.

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Basic components of a good company web site design

We don't expect our clients to know or understand all the technical ins and outs of web design and publishing. We do expect that our clients will want and need to understand how their design choices will affect their website's profitability. You probably understand the importance of a good website name, Privacy Policy, Service Policy and the value of a good hosting service. Already knowing what a website is, what a web server does and that publishing a poor company website can be a costly mistake, let's dive in. Of all the basic website design components to consider, there is one component that is absolutely critical. So we'll start there.

What is the most important component?

Text information is the critical component

That's right. Simple words, written on a web page. Free information is what every business website is all about. The words that are written directly on the web page, are all that describe the information content to both search engines and your human visitors as well. The words on your logo or other picture graphics are only visible to sighted people, using a graphical browser. They do nothing positive for your search engine ranking. Many small business website owners falsely believe that their website is simply another form of electronic advertising. Their website pages look like a series of TV ads, with only pictures of their products rather than detailed text descriptions of their products or services. This is search engine suicide! Good business websites help users find good business information. All the components of a good web page are important to the quality of the site.

The advantages of written text descriptions over pictures are:

Website navigation components

Site Menus must be easy to find, easy to understand and follow. Menus are simply an organized collection of hyper links. Although Javascript and flash menus offer design options that are visually appealing, they should be avoided. Unless the visitor's web browser supports the script or has the right plugg-in already installed, they can't use the menu! Visitors will quickly leave a web site when they can't find the information that they came for. If your website's main menu does not provide links to all your information pages, you need to provide a good site map or a site index. Usability is the key component to every successful business website. A user friendly website is important.

Links or good text links

Links are what the World Wide Web (WWW) is all about. Having many links is a good thing, few links is a bad thing. Internal links allow visitors to find additional information on your site, that expands on or explains information topics. External links or third party links allow visitors to find good information sites following the topic, on other websites.

Graphics components

Graphics include all the pictures, backgrounds, borders and other visual presentation effects. Good graphics use can enhance a visitor's experience. Overdo this critical component and you can lose professional credibility, very quickly.

Colors and shades

There are 216 web safe colors. Using colors that are not on this list may cause your web pages to render differently in different browsers. Internet Explorer is not the only web browser. Although there are definite emotional responses to specific colors, choosing the right colors for your business type can help to create instant credibility for your business website.

Valid (x)HTML page markup

Valid web pages allow every browser to display web pages the way they were written. Without valid code, your pages may look completely different, or not even be readable in some browsers. To design an accessible website, the pages must be written in a valid markup language. As a bonus, search engines are beginning to take valid web sites more seriously in recent times. Your site will not become obsolete, if it remains valid. Professional quality websites need to be valid.

Stylesheets or Cascading Style Sheets

Valid cascading style sheets or CSS, allow designers to add great presentation effects and user functionality, without creating web pages that are too large or contain invalid markup. However, web pages must always be usable without them. Multiple stylesheets allow users to customize the way they experience your site.

E-mail & Contact information

Contact information should be easy to find and must always include your email address. If you have more than one person or department answering the company email, include a directory of all the people to contact for specific departments. You have probably had difficulty finding any contact information on the web sites you visit. Very annoying, isn't it? There are a number of different ways your visitor can use email to contact you. However, visitor privacy and security should always be a high priority.

Databases and dynamic web pages

Dynamically generated web pages rely on a database to produce each page you see. Since the web page can change content with each new visitor, search engines often have difficulty giving a true page ranking to these pages. When needed, you can still include an inventory database on your website, if you update it frequently.

Website accessibility components

The primary product of the World Wide Web is open source information. Open source means free information that is available to everyone. Many of the people who could benefit from all this free information, are unable to access it due to physical or mental disabilities. Business websites that make information accessible to nearly everyone , prove that they care about their customers needs. A user friendly website can find new customers for your company. Accessible website components are simply good business.

A good domain name for a web site

A critical component to good seo. Choosing a good domain name for a business website is one of the most important decisions a business owner can make. Unfortunately, this is usually where choosing the company name with a .com extension, appears to be obvious. The value that search engines place on the right domain name can't be overstated. Good SEO starts with a good website name.

Meta tags components

The proper use of meta tags is important to every website. In the early days of the WWW, meta tag abuse reduced the value that search engines place on most of the meta tag components found in proper html. That said, some meta tags are still important to good seo. Since meta tags help browsers to display pages correctly, they help to create a user friendly website. The most important meta tag is the description tag, since it is the summary of each page.

Page titles - good title use is an important component

W3C calls the page title tag the most important element of a quality web page for some very good reasons. The title of every document should describe what the document information is about. This is an absolutely critical component for every web page on a good business web site. About us and who we are, are worthless page titles. SEO is frequently focused on writing good page titles, as a first step in improving search results.

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Your website component priority decisions really matter

Your business has financial objectives and priorities for building a company website.

Search engines have objectives and priorities for indexing and ranking a website.

Your website's visitors have priorities and objectives for visiting any business website.

Unless you put the needs of your visitors first, it's very unlikely that your financial objectives will be met.

You probably expect your business site to find new customers. Your customers are trying to find business information sites. That is why a good seo is so important to help every good business site to answer important questions for all your website users.

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