How to Design a Professional Website

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Here is what I have put to gather on how to create an website for someone or for your self on a professional or personal level website and other thing, too!

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How to Design a Professional Website
Thesis by: Cody Hammond '>

The first step of website design is to meet with the customers’ representative or for your self. This may be an personal, or the customer of they may have retained a marketing firm to assist them in developing their image. During these meetings, you have to discover what the customer is attempting to accomplish with their website. This may be selling a product, service or just providing data regarding the general environment and information. (i.e.: Major Project Objectives, Team Members, Sitemap architecture, and other information.) In many cases websites are developed just as an avenue to deliver information on specific subject. After the first few meetings the web designer will provide an estimated cost of website development that can range from Free and up to thousand of dollars or more. At the conclusion of this step and after gathering information about the website, a Web designer can provide an estimated time-line of development for the project. This may take weeks or even months to gather this type of information. The web designer must have a clear understanding of what you want or the customer wants the website to accomplish.

The next step is to begin the preliminary drafts of the website. This begins with the development of the thumbnail sketch. One of these will be developed for each version of a website page. One page of a website might have as many as 15 to 20 thumbnail sketches that have to be drawn. After these have been developed they will be given to the client to consider which (He/she) like best. In many cases the client or your self will not like the first set, and the designer (That meaning you.) will start over with some new concepts. This is why it is important to understand the clients objectives through the meeting described in the first step.

After the thumbnail sketches have been chosen and approved by the client ( or your self ), larger and more detailed images will be developed by the web designer. The images are first done in a rough draft form, showing much more detail and basic color concepts. These drafts then are presented to the client ( or your self ) for consideration. Once again the process is repeated until the client ( or your self ) is satisfied that the messages (He or She) is attempting to project or accomplished. Once a final rough draft has been approved, it will be used to develop a template that will reflect the final website. There are additional characteristics to professionally produced websites that must be taken into consideration. The use of navigation within the website, ease of modification of layouts, colors and fonts and the changing of website images, all are important aspects of the professional website.

“That graphic design exists as something separate to the use of text. Indeed, that the use of images and graphics must be the prime consideration in information design because “graphics communicate proverbially. Viewer see and “get” them before they ever read a word”. The template is developed by the using advanced software tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to help create the advanced visual effects required in a professional website. This presents an entirely new set of challenges for the web designer. As stated in the Software Review journal (Johnson, John R.) “Learning about micro computer graphic (MCG) programs presents most users with a variety of problems and frustrations. These problems are similar to those associated with learning any new type of computer hardware or software.”

The template as in the previous steps, Has to be approved by the client. It is at this stage that the final image of the website starts to become apparent. Once the customer ( or your self ) has approved the template it can be used to develop the final website. In the final step the template is input into a software program that reads the template and produces an HTML program that is used to display the final website.
As you can see the communication between the web designer and the client ( or your self ) has to be very good and concise to allow the web designer (that meaning you.) to convey the image the client wants to portray. Additionally, at this stage is where the additional features of the website are decided, features such as shopping carts, visitor counters, other website links, contact pages, animation and motion graphics to mention a few.

“Graphic-based e-commerce, e-learning, and e-communication, solutions often employ computer animations in order to increase the effectiveness of message communication. Cognitive scientists have found that metaphor and analogy characterize a good deal of human cognitive structure and processes. We suggest that animators and motion graphic designers might enhance their control of design and development processes as well as the effectiveness of message reception, if they develop and employ and enhanced awareness of the underlying metaphors that populate their animations” (Enhancing E-Solution Animation through Conceptual Metaphor)
As indicated in the “Enhancing e-Solution Animations through Conceptual

Metaphor” These additional features will be added to the final website design, and after appropriate testing, the client will be ready to go live with the website.

As you can see the development of a professional looking website is not a quick or easily accomplish task. It requires time and a great deal of communication between the web designer and the client. A deep understanding of the clients business needs is required to develop the proper theme to the website. The web designer must also develop a close business relationship with the client ( or your self ) thus they must have good interpersonal skills. The development of a professional website ( or personal website ) requires technical and interpersonal skills in order to accomplish the goals.