Webpage Design: Part I

Think of a webpage as a dynamic and digital artifact that offers something meaningful to the visitor. For example, a digital newspaper delivers information, an online class teaches a subject, a web-based store sells a product, etc. As a writer, therefore, your website becomes the vessel by which you deliver your message – your written artifacts!

The Billboard of the New Millennium

While some might argue that traditional billboards are still widely used today, and they’d be right, the new Millennium introduced the digital and multimedia marquee plastered on the sides of buildings, wrapped around brightly lit larger-than-life screens in New York City's Times Square Garden, and flashing in windows up and down the Vegas strip. Others, however, will argue there’s no billboard like the digital representation of a website.

Photo by: Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

Why? Because, unlike those static marquees that offer the seer nothing more than the "never-changing" message, visitors can access websites twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week – from their smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

Essentially, a well-designed website with effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and an inviting Graphical User Interface (GUI) provides a dynamic place for the visitor to shop around and stay awhile, whereas a billboard is just a static message announcing the existence of a product or service.

Times Square: 1560 Broadway View Live. (2019). YouTube. https://youtu.be/4qyZLflp-sI.

Back to the Beginning

Since the release of Microsoft’s iconic Windows ’95, with its user-friendly GUI, webpage design was thrust into mainstream digital media. Fast forward twenty-six years and in 2021 you’ll be hard-pressed to find a computer system running anything less than Windows 7 – clunky at best by today’s standards.

Photo by: Creativity103 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Why does all that matter? Because with new Operating System (OS) builds comes new technology, faster processors, solid-state hard drives, and lightning-speed graphics; all important components when publishing digital information, especially when developing pages with interactive graphics and forms.

Utility and Usability

However, let’s put all that aside for a moment and look at the two core components of a functional webpage, utility (the features of a website) and usability (the extent to which the features are enjoyed) (Vasiliu, 2020).

Both of these seemingly simple concepts must be developed in a way that presents the visitor with the best possible experience: The proverbial VIP guest at the hottest show in town.

The Garnish and Why It Matters

Have you ever asked yourself why the chef bothers to add a slice of spiraled orange and a bit of leafy green stuff to your plate, or why the baker drizzles the cherry juice in a lacey design across the cheesecake? It’s because it makes the dinner and dessert more appealing to the eye. Sure, the cheesecake will taste just as yummy if the cherry juice were simply ladled over the top but your eyes wouldn’t know that until the first bite landed on your taste buds.

Furthermore, the unappealing site of haphazardly ladled cherry juice is likely to send the wrong message to the pleasure center of your brain, inadvertently setting you up for potential disappointment.

So, what’s the point? Presentation matters!

And just as that cherry juice matters to the cheesecake eater, the graphics matter to the website visitor: the layout, colors, designs, fonts, options, links, information – all of it. To satisfy your visitors, the folks who read your published work, you must put the time into the platform that delivers your messages. And that, my friends, is called “webpage design.”

Website Hosting: Wix and WordPress

According to Steve Benjamins, of Site Builder Reports, “Wordpress and Wix are both tools for building a website— but they have completely different approaches: Wix is a website builder and Wordpress is a CMS (or Content Management System)” (2021).

So, what does this mean to the beginner? Wix is built on a plug-and-play concept where the webpage designer can literally select site elements from a gallery of themes, fonts, graphics, and such whereas WordPress is an opensource host that requires knowledge of things like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), for example, to create those elements.

Photo by: Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Suffice it to say that if you don’t know what CSS is, Wix is likely your better option.

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

Oooh…that sounds truly graphical and almost yummy! Tell me more!

Okay, think of GUI as the way you decorate your house. Most people will pick a theme. For this example, we’ll use a log cabin. On the outside, there are neatly laid logs and a sprawling front porch with planters hanging from the corner posts, a wooden toboggan on one side of the door, and a small stack of wood on the other.

You get the idea – the cabin is friendly, charming, and inviting. And, on the inside, the log theme continues but the decorations change – log walls merge with solid wood flooring leading to cozy nooks and comfy rooms full of wooden furniture and cast iron decorations on the walls.

Your webpage should invite people in like that cozy log cabin. Visitors should feel welcomed and encouraged to explore. The farther they explore, the more treasures they find, increasing your traffic, readership, and place on that Google search page.

“Simply put, User Interface Design is important because it can make or break your customer base. It creates fewer problems, increases user involvement, perfects functionality, and creates a strong link between your customers and your website” (Plego, 2020).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What the heck is that you ask? Well, simply put, it decides where your website will appear in a search result. Awesome SEO will net a website a place at or near the top of the first result page, whereas poor SEO will place a website on some page other than the first which might as well be in outer space because people rarely look past the results on the first page.

In fact, according to top web influencer and New York Times bestselling author, Neil Patel, “75% of people will never scroll past the first page on a Google search” (2021).

Photo by: Edho Pratama on Unsplash

Summary

In today’s commerce, having a functional website is practically essential to achieving success, no matter the product or service you’re selling. This article provides the basic concepts of web page design and introduces the most rudimentary concepts to get the beginner moving in the right direction. Stay tuned for Webpage Design: Part II for an in-depth comparison of WordPress and Wix web hosting software, including step-by-step instructional videos.

#wordpress #wix #seo #gui

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References

Benjamins, S. (2021, May 20). Wix vs WordPress. 6 Differences To Know For 2021. https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/wix-vs-wordpress

Creativity103. (n.d.). Electronic Circuit Board. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=ccsearch&atype=rich.

GUI. GUI | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/gui.

How Important is User Interface Design? The Importance of User Interface Design Comments. (2020, July 1). https://www.plego.com/blog/importance-user-interface-design/#:~:text=Simply%20put%2C%20User%20Interface%20Design,your%20customers%20and%20your%20website.

Kagan, M. (2016, October 20). 100 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts, & Graphs [Data]. HubSpot Blog. https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14416/100-Awesome-Marketing-Stats-Charts-Graphs-Data.aspx?toc-variant-a=.

Patel, N. (2021, May 18). How to Show Up on the First Page of Google (Even if You're a Nobody). Neil Patel. https://neilpatel.com/blog/first-page-google/.

Times Square: 1560 Broadway View Live. (2019). YouTube. https://youtu.be/4qyZLflp-sI.

Vasiliu, E. (2020). Website Design for Effective Digital Audience Engagement: A Conceptual Framework. Journal of Media Research, 13(3), 70–94. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.24193/jmr.38.5.