What is a Web Designer?

A Web Designer is a person who designs pages for the World Wide Web. Web page design requires computer graphic design skills plus knowledge of HTML and how to convert graphic images and sound files into web formats.

What can a web designer do for you? Is it affordable and worth it? Why do you want a website? What kind of website is best for you? Are you a business offering a service or a product that you are looking to have sold on the internet? What is your target audience?

When deciding if you want a website you first have to set goals such as what you are trying to accomplish. What do you want the internet world to know? What message are you trying to convey? If you're selling a service or a product, is there a demand or a need for that type of service or product?

What is a good Web Design?

When developing a Web page, it's extremely important to consider the Internet environment. A designer should keep in mind all the aspects of how each page is going to interact with the other pages of the local site and the Internet as a whole.

Good Design takes into consideration how each individual page works with Internet technology, its place within the overall site organization, and its performance regarding search engine rankings and other linking tools out on the World Wide Web.

The design of the Web page should be understood as a multimedia event. An important element of this is to design the page so that text comes in first, as the graphic elements build in around it. Also, a little bit of activity on the page in the form of animations might enhance the multimedia aspect and give your site a more dynamic look. Animation adds dimension to your Web site beyond that of a static graphic.

As a general rule all the text and images on an individual Web page shouldn't comprise more than 50k. Animated gifs might be the exception, but the animated gif will show the first frame of the animation while the rest of the page loads in. So if you have an animated gif at about 100k, your whole page along with the first frame of the animation will show up in entirety while the rest of the gif is loading in. This is acceptable due to the fact it still allows the Web site visitor access to everything on the page they might need.

The page should also give the appearance of depth, a consistent look among all the graphics, and a sense of balance in the design.

The easier a browser can understand the why's and wherefore's of your design the better. The page should give the site visitor a clear definition of where they are, what they can hope to find, and an enticement to stay and then revisit the Web site at a later time. Many site visitors move on when a Web page's design is simply too confusing.

Making each page "search engine" savvy is a common oversight of most Web designers. Each of the pages of your Web site has the opportunity to be listed (spidered, posted, indexed) within a variety of search engines. Each of the major search engines are pretty finicky about issues like, "keywords" "meta tags" "spamming" and "word ratios." It's important to take these issues into account when developing your overall site concept.

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