AlpineWEB Web Design Services A good web site puts the needs of it's users first. We all want to know what makes a website a good website. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but there are some essentials. A successful website meets clearly identified goals and provides compelling content that draws your audience to your site again and again. In addition it is easy to navigate and last to is attractively designed to complement the content.

The Purpose of your web site
Why do you have a website? What its purpose? How are you going to measure your success? All too often, people want a web site without giving time or thought to a clear statement of purpose for the site. A web site with clearly defined purpose stands out and is easily recognised as such. Time spent on this before developing your site will make sure you get the best out of it.
For example, you may be trying to:

• provide a service
• sell a product
• present information on a topic

If you are providing a service, you are also likely to be supplying marketing information and other related content. This is perfectly acceptable, but you should not lose sight of the principal purpose of the site, which in this case is to provide a service.

Having a clearly defined purpose will also help when it comes to submitting your site to search engines & directories. They will ask you to provide a short description, so you must be able to quote an effective one-line definition of the site, its purpose and aims. The accuracy and relevance of this description will determine whether or not a searcher visits your site or chooses another.
In Summary...

• Knowing your web site's purpose is vital.
• Be focused: clearly define the principal purpose of your site.
• Be able to state your site's purpose in one sentence.
• Don't be misleading: be crystal clear and honest.

The Importance of Design
We're talking about things like colour choice, alignments, and visual interest. Designing for the web is very different than designing for print. Unlike the printed page, users control much of a web page's appearance. They can turn graphics off. They can reduce or enlarge the font size. They can reduce the viewing area. You don't know what size or resolution monitor they have. You don't know what browser they're using, and thus what html features they can see. Screen display is poorer than print publications, so high resolution graphics are wasted. It is harder to read text on screen and users are more prone to scan and skip about. You need to consider all of these factors, and more, in web design.

Good web sites load quickly. Most users are willing to wait 10 to 15 seconds for a page to download, but not much more unless it's a page they really want. Slow download time is the number one complaint of users.

Good web sites present their most relevant content in the first one or two screens. Make your home page count. Many users will decide whether to stay or to leave based on what they see when the page first loads.

Good web sites are easy to navigate. Have you ever been to a beautiful looking website only to leave in frustration because you could not find what you are looking for? You should assume that your audience may not enter the site from the home page. This means that there should be no dead ends. Every page should have consistent easy to understand links back to other pages.

Good web sites use special effects only if they add value. This includes image maps, busy background images, scrolling text, and animation. Remember your target audience: what adds value for a child is different than what adds value for their parents or grandparents. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should.

Making Your Content Count
Content is king. You need to understand who your target audience is and what you want them to do. Then you must provide them with the appropriate information and a meaningful call to action. Web Page Content should always be Unique and focused directly on the product or services that are being promoted.

You know best - or should - what your audience wants. It then becomes an easy task to decide about which types of content will best serve their needs and how to go about finding or creating it.
Here are some suggestions:

• Feature articles - The most common, and one of the best forms of content.
• News clips or stories - New industry news or news updates.
• Galleries - Sound, music, pictures, photographs, video clips and much more!
• Reviews - Recommend to your visitors - books, websites, music, movies, art, restaurants, anything.
• Announcements - People love to feel informed and up with the latest gossip and happenings.
• Interactive features - polls, feedback, discussion groups, forums, chat.

Is Your Website User Accessible?
Not everyone who visits your site is perfectly enabled. Some people have disabilities, some have slow connections, some can't install the Flash plug-in. Knowing your target audience and your goals certainly helps to set your usability and accessibility standards.

The types of computers and connection speeds of our users vary widely. Remember that while a growing number of people have broadband connections, there are still a high percentage of people using dial up modems.

AlpineWEB designs sites for screen resolutions of 800x600 or higher. More than 99 percent of people connected to the internet are using a resolution of 800x600 or higher. We strongly discourage creating designs that require horizontal scrolling on resolutions of 800x600. We test your site at different screen resolutions as well as different browsers and different platforms.