Web Design and Web Development

Web design and Web development is more than creating a design for a Website that looks appealing. A website needs to be effective as a sales and Marketing tool. Nowadays Internet marketing (Search Engine Optimization or SEO) is also great importance in order to be successful on the web with your website. 

Web design is usually the first stage of a project. At this point, the project is not a website at all, but layers of pixels within a graphics package. The first goal to achieve at this stage is to create a web design with visual appeal. Did you know that it takes as little as 50 milliseconds for a potential customer to decide whether they like a website? This means that if your site doesn't look good, the chances are it is not reaching its optimum promotional potential. For most web designers, once they have produced an appealing web design, your website is done.

At &Global, once we have created a design for your website our job is far from done. A website that is truly successful needs to consist of all the following:

• Clearly shows what your company has to offer
• If the company offers a large number of products and/or services the most important one should be prominently displayed
• The website's navigation(s) need to be user friendly
• Contact information needs to be clearly visible;
• Points of sales need to be simplistic and intuitive;
• The website should not be cluttered with useless or marginal information;
• Text should be inviting to read;
• And of course your website needs to be found easily on the Internet, prominently on Google, Bing MSN and Yahoo.

This may sound simple, but how many web sites do you see that possess the above aspects? Many websites on Curacao suffer from lack of design variation, a lack of imagination and/or development ability.

Guide lines regarding the usability of a website

Usability represents the ease-of-use inherent in your website's design, navigation, architecture, and functionality. The idea behind the practice is to make your site intuitive so that visitors will have the best possible experience on your Web site. Various features figure into usability, including:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  OK | So you have established an effective Web Presence. Now what?
  We at &Global want your website to be useful, and thus needs to found easily on the Internet (or World Wide Wweb). Therefore an Internet Marketing (IM) strategy is needed to increase qualified traffic to your Website via appropriate marketing channels, which will lead to greater awareness and customer acquisition.

• Web Design
  Graphical elements and layout of a website have a strong influence on how easily usable the website is. Standards like blue, underlined links, top and side menu bars, logos in the top, left-hand corner may seem like rules that can be bent, but adherence to these elements (with which web users are already familiar) will help to make a site usable. Design also encompasses important topics like visibility & contrast, affecting how easy it is for users to interest the text and image elements of the website. Separation of unique sections like navigation, Advertising, content, search bars, etc. is also critical, as users follow design cues to help them understand a page's content. A final consideration would also take into account the importance of ensuring that critical elements in a site's design (like menus, logos, colors, and layout) were used consistently throughout the website.

• Information Architecture
  The organizational hierarchy of a website can also strongly affect usability. Topics and categorization impact the ease with which a user can find the information they need on your website.

• Navigation
  A navigation system that guides users easily through both top-level and deep pages and makes a high percentage of the website easily accessible is critical to good usability.

• Functionality

• Accessibility

• Content
  The usability of content itself is often overlooked, but its importance cannot be overstated. The descriptive nature of headlines, the accuracy of information and the quality of content all factor highly into a website's likelihood to retain visitors, gain links and improve SEO results (for Curacao).