Exam (elaborations) 9.2 Website Design

Unlike with software development, there are no accepted, well organised and documented methods for developing Web sites. There are, however, some good practices — for example, it is best to avoid 'technology traps' by not committing to new, but untried, technologies. 9.2.1 Guidelines for Developing a Website The development of many websites is driven by the enthusiasm of designers and implementers — people who are often keen to use the latest technology. Being driven by technology rather than business and customer needs can lead to sites that are slow in execution, complicated to use, and do not achieve the intended results. Ironically, committing to a new technology too early can cause a website to rapidly look dated, either because the technology did not become popular and so stayed in an old form, or because the adoption of the new technology was so expensive that little budget remained for site maintenance. As a general rule, avoid the unnecessary use of technology. While doing so, also recognise that any technology that has been avoided at some point in a website's lifetime may become vital to the site as the site's needs change, or even as user interface fashion progresses. This idea of change, and the fluidity of the guidelines, is important. Technology that is unnecessary today may be acceptable or even necessary in a few years’ time . For example, it was once considered inadvisable to use framesor scrolling text. Now, these are less of an issue: frames are supported by most browsers in current use, and users are used to scrolling. (However, we will still discuss these below.) 9.2.2 Analysing Overall Site Aims The first activity of website development is the definition of the site's purpose. Begin with the broadest idea and refine this. Once the broad, high-level description of the site's purpose is known, refine the goals in more detail. Ask yourself, "What are we trying to achieve?" and answer the question in a way that adds detail to the description. Do not only consider the obvious questions concerning the site's purpose, but also the issues around the implicit messages a potential customer might receive from the site. For example, if a website selling holiday packages offers most of its packages in, say, Italy, as that is where most of the company's customers have traditionally wanted to go, then the site might give the impression that Italy is the only country that the company knows about. While some messages should be avoided, there might also be positive messages that the site should given, such as those concerning the quality of the service, or how long the company has been in business. Website Design 4 Thus, one aspect of website design is to identify primary and secondary goals for the site. The primary goals may be achieved by directly implementing facilities to meet those goals, for example, by providing a catalogue of goods and services. The secondary goals may be achieved in more subtle ways, by, for example, choosing colours that suggest stability, excitement, or so on; or by providing subtle, positive messagesto the customer concerning the company running the website and the services on offer. Let us pursue these ideas with an example. Say you are in the business of developing software on behalf of clients, and that you also sell programming language compilers and development environments. Your clients might choose both the programming language and a specific compiler for it. For instance, one client might choose Java, and another might choose C++. The second of these clients may or may not have an opinion as to whether Microsoft Visual C++ should be used in preference to IBM's VisualAge C++. You sell both, as well as other C++ development systems, so you can cope with the choice of either. You have decided that the main purpose of your new Web site is to 'sell the services' of your company. How do you determine the details of this? One method is brainstorming, in which a group of people briefly consider all aspects of an idea. Participants in a brainstorming session are expected to contribute to discussions, to arguments in an unstructured, anarchic, often unruly way. They will often jump from one idea to another, calling out words, arguing for and against points — sometimes simultaneously. In brainstorming the ideas of all the participants are initially given equal weighting, so the most lowly employee may argue freely with the most exulted. Brainstorming is usually thought of as a fun way to generate ideas; it is a very creative process and the outcomes can often be surprising with unexpected benefits. As can be seen from the previous exercise, expressing many ideas using brainstorming or a similar technique, may result in a mixture of ideas concerning the purpose of the site and how to achieve it. Ignore the detail of the 'how' and try to understand what it means. One suggestion of, say, using grey to suggest reliability may contradict a suggestion of using bright colours to convey excitement and being a 'go-getting' company, but that does not matter at this stage. The important information here is that both aspects of the company are to be conveyed. The question is whether it should be a primary or a secondary goal. One question concerning primary goals that the brainstorming did not settle is that of what the site is primarily selling — software development skills or programming language implementations. The sooner this is answered the better — but it might require debate, and the decision may, to some extent, depend on what can be achieved in the time and budget available for site development. For example, it may be difficult to organise the selling of programming language implementations because the website might have to interact with a database of information about stock levels. Another reason for not promoting that side of the business might be that the company could not cope with too much extra business of that kind. The irrelevance of distance when selling products might increase sales of compilers and programming environments, whereas the need for software developers to meet their clients might naturally limit take-up if that side of the company's business was promoted. As well asthe website developers knowing what the site's purpose is, they must also know its audience. With knowledge of your audience, you can tailor both content and presentation to suit their needs and keep Web customers returning for more business. Ultimately, knowledge of the business requirements and expected audience is the starting point of understanding the site requirements and design. Knowing these facets provides a foundation for site development. Such a foundation must be the basis for the design. It should drive the design. You must not start with an arbitrary design and force other choices to fit it. 9.2.3 Website Architecture The design of a site involves many considerations, not least of which is navigation, a discussion of which occurs later. Other than navigation, the following points need to be considered as well: • the structure of the site — how the pages are organised (logically, rather than physically on disk); • the possible paths through the structure — both the paths you might prefer or expect a user to follow, and the paths you should provide to make the structure truly hypertext; • the style — the so-called 'look and feel', that is, the layout of the actual pages; • the structure of individual pages — how each page is organised (or how categories of page are Website Design 5 organised). All the above points are related to each, and so it is not possible to prescribe an order in which they should be considered. For example, the structure of the site is related to the possible paths throu