Web Design For Dummies

Lisa Lopuck

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118235546
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Web design

Get up to speed on the newest technologies, tools, and possibilities in web design

Have a great idea for a web site but don't know where or how to begin? Web Design For Dummies, 3rd Edition is an ideal starting point! Fully updated to cover the latest and the greatest in the world of web design, this fun-but-straightforward guide gets you caught up with everything you need to know to organize your ideas, create a template, start development, test to make sure everything is working properly, and launch your finished site. Packed with invaluable advice on incorporating social media aspects, linking content with social sites, and designing for mobile devices, this book will have you web designing like a pro in no time.

• Highlights the many significant changes in the world of web design since the previous edition, including the introduction of HTML5, new technologies for sharing media, mobile web design, and more
• Zeroes in on effectively using color, text, and navigation
• Reveals helpful advice for avoiding common pitfalls
• Details ways to connect with social sites like Twitter and Facebook

Web Design For Dummies, 3rd Edition goes beyond just making a basic web site and instead encourages you to create a site that is appealing, practical, and useful.

Part I

The Web Design Kick-Off

Professional website production involves a lot of complex, interdependent tasks and requires an experienced team of people to get everything done. As you embark on your adventures in web design and/or web management, a good first step is to understand this production process from start to finish — and the people involved — so you have a holistic picture of what to expect and know where you fit in along the way. In fact, even though many design firms tout their mastery of the web-production process as a selling point when they’re trying to win bids, the truth is that most firms follow the same or similar process: Define, Design, Develop, Deploy. The client then gets to handle “Phase Five” — Maintenance!

In Chapter 1, I introduce you to the different types of roles and responsibilities associated with the web-production process. In Chapter 2, I take you through the whole production process, showing how design agencies and in-house design teams manage Web projects from start to finish.

1
So You’re Designing a Website

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In This Chapter

Understanding team members’ roles and responsibilities

Getting started on your web-design career

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The digital industry has been exploding since its inception — from websites to mobile applications and social media, the opportunities are endless. This is great news for you if you’re thinking about becoming a professional web designer. The industry is ever-changing and evolving — and exciting, rapid developments are around every corner.

Web design is not just about creating a series of pages that looks good. In this book, I show you how to design a cohesive site that links its parts together in a way that delivers on business goals and makes sense to the user. Modern websites can consist of hundreds of pages. As a professional web designer or manager, your job is to know how to integrate design and navigation using a myriad of technologies and techniques to build an effective site.

While building a professional-grade website may seem like a daunting task, if you understand the process from start to finish and the roles of the people involved, you’ll be on better footing to get started.

In this chapter, I introduce you to the different players that you’ll surround yourself with on your journey through professional web design.

The People Involved

Designing websites is such a huge undertaking that to do it right, you really need a team of people — whether working with an internal team, with vendors, or independent consultants. Here is a sampling of the major players, their roles, and when you need them.

Business folks and clients

In the early days, you could get away with sticking a website up on the Internet and expect to get reasonable traffic without much further effort. In the crowded Internet highways of today, however, you really need a business strategy and a marketing plan. The business and marketing folks, whether internal or your client, must be involved with the website from the very beginning. They are in charge of the following responsibilities:

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Setting the goals and requirements for the site. You must always understand the business goals, in order of priority, of the site. For example, the number one goal may be to sell product. The business people not only provide the top three-or-so goals to set the site’s direction but will also need to provide a list of site requirements — essentially a wish list of the site’s capabilities — its “ability to do X.”

Identifying the target customer. The marketing team members are the ones that are closest to a business’s end consumer. They should provide a profile picture of the ideal customer that the site must cater to. The “information architects” (discussed later in this chapter, these are people who design a site’s underlying structure) on the team will use this data to develop a set of “personas” that will focus the creative team’s efforts throughout the web development process.

Reeling in the visitors. The marketing team also needs to figure out how to direct customers to the site. In the Internet business, getting eyeballs (attracting people to your site) ...