Website Design and Development: A Science and an Art

Business website design and development has become a necessity as websites are becoming more and more mediums to promote companies’ products and services. Being an interactive form of media, websites can be well used to build friendly and ongoing customer relationships. Most of the time, they are the main source of tangible business income. An airline, for example, obtains most of its reservations through “E Tickets” purchased online. Similarly, reservations at a hotel or resort can be made quickly from anywhere if the hotel has such a facility on its website. Clearly, the constant use of the Internet in daily life confirms that good websites are necessary for the very survival of a business. It is through a website that you can highlight the unique selling proposition of your business to the maximum number of customers around the world.

E-commerce websites also known as online stores have achieved immense popularity globally and all the stakeholders in this business want to increase their online traffic and gain as many customers as possible. An ecommerce website should be built with custom made shopping cart software. It must also present an image of vitality, competitiveness and competence. A recent survey conducted with around 10,000 online shoppers; over 30 percent cited poor website organization as the top reason for abandoning an online store.

Business websites must have a balanced combination of design and security. They should also have user-friendly navigation. SEO is another idea if you want your website to rank at the top of a keyword search on search engines like Google and Bing.

In the online world, a browser can jump to any section of the website via an external link. Randomly, once visitors arrive at any page of the website, they decide whether to navigate to other pages, return to the website at another time, or leave the web page. The decision depends on how pleasant or interesting the user finds the web page.

The World Wide Web Consortium or W3C is the most important “international standards” organization for the World Wide Web. The consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff to work together to refine standards for the World Wide Web. By using these standards, the foundation of a website is built on technologies that have been developed and tested by leading experts in the web community. With more than 300 organizations in the web world contributing to research and development efforts to compile and update the W3C standards, these standards are truly the cutting edge of the Web.

Developing an effective website according to the latest W3C standards is not everyone’s forte. Only experienced and professional web agencies can be trusted with this work.