Websites: a definitive guide
This article is intended to give a broad overview of the Internet and Websites for beginners. Just about everybody now has heard of the Internet. But what is the difference between the Internet and websites? What are the elements of a website? Hopefully, I can help you understand a little more.
The Internet is an ever expanding collection of websites. Just like your computer is a collection of software, i.e. Operating System, Internet Browser, Email Program. However, the Internet on the other hand expands at around 10 million web pages per day. Google currently indexes approximately 8 billion web pages. You can gain access to the Internet by using your computer an Internet Browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox) and a subscription with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Some popular ISPs in Ireland are Eircom, Digiweb, Irish Broadband. They provide a service that allow you to connect to the Internet. You then use a browser to view web pages. Contrary to popular believe, the browser is not the Internet, it is just a device used to view web pages on the Internet.
A website is collection of web pages and other media. A website is stored on a server, which is just a powerful computer that serves the website to the Internet. Once a website is stored on a server it is then available to anyone on the Internet. The company that owns the server is called a hosting company. If you were having a website built then you would need a hosting company in order to store and serve your website.
A website will always have a website address or otherwise known as a URL. A typical URL would be google.com or dakor.ie. A website address is a user friendly way to remember a website name, otherwise you would have to remember an I.P. address. Just imagine trying to remember the I.P. of my website, http:// 208.113.223.92 instead of www.dakor.ie. When you type in a URL into your browser the Internet goes to work and looks up the I.P. address associated with the URL. The I.P. address tells your browser where the server is located and what website you are looking for. Of course, all of this is done in split seconds and then the website is displayed on your browser.
There are three main elements to a website: design, navigation, and content. A lot of business owners tend to primarily focus on the website design. However, It is important to have a good mix of all three elements. If a website looks good but is difficult to navigate or does not have good content then the visitors will probably not come back for a second visit. If a website has a lot of content but the navigation falls short of expectations then it will frustrate the visitors which means they probably will not come back for a second visit.
A website has six seconds to keep a visitor’s attention. In those six seconds the visitor will evaluate the design and navigation to decide if it is worth investing time in exploring the website further. They quickly calculate whether the time invested in staying on the website will provide a good return of finding what they are looking for.
The design of the website is important but tends to receive an over-weighted importance to the owner of the website. A website design should represent the company culture and the products or services. As a website is a visual medium the colour scheme should be chosen based on the target market. For example, if a website is about monster trucks then a bad colour scheme would be pastels, a flower shop should not have a black background.
The content of a website is just as important as design. Content of a website is one of the deciding factors of search engine ratings. Search engines and visitors love to find a diverse range of content on a website. However, the content should all be pertaining to the same theme.
Without navigation the Internet would not have survived. Navigation is the element of a website that helps visitors access other sections of a website. The navigation of a website is the visual representation of the content structure. The most common structure is top-down design, this allows for the most general category to be displayed as the primary navigation. The visitor then decides which element in the navigation to select that will result in them finding what they are looking for. When a general element is selected more detailed options will be presented based on that element.
So the next time you visit a website, be conscious of the three elements of design, navigation and content. Think about the design, does it match the product/service. Is it easy to navigate around the website, does it have a search facility? Did you use it? Why did you use it and not the navigation? Did you find additional information on the website that you didn’t know before? Will you return to that website?
Written by Vince Doherty, Dakor Web Services is a full service web design/development company