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The web - what is it and how do I access it?

The World Wide Web or 'Web' for short is a network of web pages that can be accessed via a huge network of computers known as 'The Internet' (note the difference - the two work together to allow people to access online resources, but are not the same thing!). The internet allows computers to connect with each other and display content from one (a server) on your connected device.

'The Web' was born in the mid-1980s, the brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist then working for Cern, and was conceived as a way of sharing resources remotely via hyperlinked documents. It was launched to the public in 1991 along with the first 'browser', a program that interprets web code and presents it in a user-friendly way, allowing anyone to access any of the documents linked via 'The Web'.

To access the web and all of its bounty, you need a device capable of running a browser, a browser itself, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Safari and an internet connection. To view a website page, someone with all of the above needs to open their browser and type in the 'domain name' or URL (uniform resource locator) into the 'address bar' to go directly to that website, or if they don't know the URL, or to browse a number of websites relating to what they're looking for, they would navigate to a 'Search Engine', Google or Bing for example.

Search engines are programs that continually index what's available on the web, using small programs knows as 'spiders' or 'robots' to scour the web for any files they can find, reporting back on their content and other information contained in those files (webpages, images & other documents) and the search engine then records that information and uses it to categorise websites, ranking them on their relevance and quality in order to decide which sites to show you when you search for any given 'search term'.

Originally, webpages were limited in what they could do, and were simply a way of sharing information with limited interactivity - a far cry from today where they are fully immersive and an integral part of each of our lives, to the point where internet access is now considered a basic human right!

What technologies do you use to design websites?

For functionality, we use php, an open-source, commonly used scripting language that is particularly well suited to web development and that can be inserted into HTML. For Content Managed Websites we use Wordpress, an open source, online website creation tool built in php. We use HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript to develop front-end website interaction, functionality and animation. We use SQL and MYSQL wherever we need a database, and from a design perspective we use the Adobe Creative suite to create for the web.

How do we go about building a website, and what web design is involved?

The process that ends up with a successful, beautifully designed, fully functional, well marketed and promoted usually begins with a great idea. Whether this idea is a product or service, or something to plug a gap in the market, a way of making money or something that entertains people - this idea is the key to making your project a success. You need to have a realistic expectation of what success looks like and a plan of how you're going to get there. You could have the best website in the world, and if your idea is a duffer, it's going to flop.

Once you have this idea and plan, an idea of how you're going to measure success, backed up with a good bit of market research you can think about how you're going to push your idea online. (The internet has become that significant that to not have a website in this day and age is not an option!). That's when Maddison Creative web design Newcastle comes in. We can help you with expert industry knowledge of what works and what doesn't. What can be achieved, and how we can achieve it. What you're going to need, how long it will take and how much it's all going to cost. We will generally then come up with a site structure, with a number of levels, and a flat design/visual/creative. Once these two key elements have been agreed then we set to work putting the two together and voila! You have a website. The hard work doesn't stop there though. Many people think that you build a website, and you can then sit back and watch it work its magic year after year. Unfortunately it's not like that - a website (and its search engine performance) are a living, breathing animal. You have to tend to it, update it, improve it, add to it and love it, otherwise it won't perform to it's maximum and you won't get most from it.

From a practical point of view, you need a domain (an address for your website so people can find it), you need a hosting company to provide you with space on one of their servers (a computer that you can access via the internet) and you need the files you create, nicely arranged into folders. Once you have all these, you attach your domain name to your server, and software that allows you to FTP (File transfer protocol) or upload your files onto your server. Once they're up there then the world can see your site and you're off!

Maddison Creative web design Newcastle can arrange all of this for you - we have great relationships with a number of hosting companies, and we use the latest FTP software, so it's not something you need to worry you - it's included in all new website packages. If you have an existing website and you like to keep the domain name and/or hosting provider, that's not a problem either, we can simply use your existing setup to upload the new site to.

What about good web design and Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization, or SEO is the process whereby you make your site as finely tuned as possible in order to ensure that Search Engines such as Google and Bing consider your website worthy enough to show ahead of all the competition.

This involves writing the content in such a way that it relates to the words (keywords) your potential customers will be searching to find whatever it is you're doing/selling/saying. It also entails making sure that all the key elements of what makes up a good website are there and put together properly. Titles, images, framework of your site, links - they all have to be right.

This also includes things you can't see - the invisible tags that sit behind your webpage, but that do an important job nonetheless. A good web designer will do all of this as a matter of course, but there's always room for improvement, especially as time marches on, and best-practice and guidelines change and what used to be the done thing is now frowned upon.

My content is the main reason people visit my site - why should I invest in getting my web design right?

The internet is so vast, and you more than likely have so much competition that potential customers can afford to be very selective, and will happily jump from site to site if they don't get instant gratification. The average time for an internet user spending on any page is just 11 seconds, so the opportunity for you to persuade them that your site is worth hanging around in is very limited. Eleven seconds isn'tsufficient time to convince them using copy alone that you're what they're looking for, especially since they're attempting to digest the entirety of your page in one go, and so you need to make the most of other devices at your disposal. This makes your design, and the visuals of your site absolutely vital to the sucess of your site.

Another study has shown that two thirds of internet users, when given their eleven seconds would much prefer to read content that is beautifully designed rather than content that is plain, hence the need to perfect your design along with your content, and another study suggests that around 40% of internet users will instantly navigate away from a page if the pictures are either broken or take too long to be revealed, highlighting the need for imagery to break up the monotony of your text. 38% of users also said that they will instantly disconnect from what a website is trying to communicate with them if the site is poorly designed.

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