Why Do We Develop Web Sites?

Before putting pen to paper (and mouse to keyboard), it’s important to think about the
reasonbehind putting a site online. Millions already exist, so why do you need to create
one yourself? Also, if you’re working for a company, perhaps you already have plenty of
marketing material, so why do you need a website as well?
I should mention here that I’m certainly not trying to put you off—far from it. Instead, I’m
trying to reinforce the point that planning is key in any web design project, and although
some people swear that “winging it” is the best way to go, most such projects end up gath-ering virtual dust online. Therefore, before doing anything else, think through why you
should build a website and what you’re trying to achieve.
Companies and individuals alike have practical and commercial reasons for setting up a
website. A website enables you to communicate with like-minded individuals or potential
clients on a worldwide basis. If you’re a creative talent of some kind, you can use a website
to showcase your portfolio, offering online photographs, music tracks for download, or
poetry. If you fancy yourself as a journalist, a blog enables you to get your opinion out
there. If you own or work for a business, creating a website is often the most efficient
means of marketing your company. And even if you just have a hobby, a website can be a
great way of finding others who share your passion—while you may be the only person in
town who likes a particular movie or type of memorabilia, chances are there are thousands
of people worldwide who think the same, and a website can bring you all together. This is
perhaps why the paper fanzine has all but died, only to be reborn online, where develop-ment costs are negligible and worldwide distribution is a cinch.
In practical terms, a website exists online all day, every day (barring the odd hiccup with
ISPs), which certainly isn’t the case with printed media, which is there one minute and in
the recycle trash the next. Distribution is less expensive than sending out printed mate-rial—a thousand-page website can be hosted for $10 per month or less, but sending a
thousand-page document to one person (let alone a thousand or several thousand) may
cost more than that. Likewise, development (particularly corrections and updates) is often
significantly cheaper, too. For example, if you want to rework a print brochure, you have
to redesign it and then reprint it. Reworking a section of a website often means swapping
out a few files, which is efficient and affordable. So, for large companies and individuals
alike, the ability to have relevant information online in a form that can often be updated
in mere minutes, thereby keeping all interested parties up to date, is hard to resist!

Audience requirements 

This site centers on the designand technology aspects of web design, but close attention
must always be paid to your potential audience. It’s no good forcing design ideas that
result in inappropriate visuals, unusable navigation to all but the most technically minded
of people, and huge download times on your site’s unsuspecting visitors.
Prior to creating a site, you must ascertain what your audience wants and expects in terms
of content, design, and how the site will work (by way of talking to the relevant people,
and also, if your budget allows, by using surveys and focus groups). You don’t have to take
all of your audience’s ideas into account (after all, many will be contradictory), but be
mindful of common themes and ensure they’re not ignored.
Technical considerations must be researched. If you’re targeting designers, you can be
fairly sure that a large proportion of the audience will be using monitors set to a high res-olution and millions of colors, and you can design accordingly. If your site is aimed at busi-ness users, be mindful that much of your potential audience will likely be using laptops (or older computers, for staff at the lower end of the ladder), with screen resolutions of
10245768 or lower.
Determining the web browsers your audience members use is another important consid-eration. Although use of web standards (used throughout this book) is more likely to
result in a highly compatible site, browser quirks still cause unforeseen problems; there-fore, always check to see what browsers are popular with a site’s visitors, and ensure you
test in as many as you can. Sometimes you won’t have access to such statistics, or you may
just be after a “sanity check” regarding what’s generally popular. A couple of useful places
to research global web browser statistics are www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_
stats.aspand www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/. Note, though, that any statistics you see
online are effectively guesswork and are not a definitive representation of the Web as a
whole; still, they do provide a useful, sizeable sample that’s often indicative of current
browser trends.
Although you might be used to checking browser usage, and then, based on the results,
designing for specific browsers, we’ll be adhering closely to web standards throughout this
book. When doing this, an “author once, work anywhere” approach is feasible, as long as
you’re aware of various browser quirks (many of which are explored in Chapter 9). Of
course, you should still always ensure you test sites in as many browsers as possible, just to
make sure everything works as intended.
References:
 The Essential Guide to CSSand HTML Web Design, Craig Grannell