Website Design – Purpose
The purpose of a website will have a major influence on the Website Design. There are many different types of purpose for a website and it can have one or many of these different types. The purpose or purposes of a site can be grouped into advertising, information provision, socializing, entertainment, business, payment handling and customer support, with each of these having their own influence on the Web Design.
A Web Design that primarily focuses on advertising must be very engaging with the user visually to keep them on the website long enough to translate the advertising message to them. The site must be very clearly defined and easy to understand, with in many cases only a few key messages to get across. Too much is often worse than too little when it comes to a Design for advertising.
Information provision is often the easiest purpose to cater for terms of Web Design. As long as the information is clear, easy to read and access then the design can be quite flexible to the desires of the company, rather than their needs.
Social networking site will in most cases have very complicated aspect of Web Design. Not only will the site have to be attractive in terms of usability and aesthetics to keep people on the site for longer, but there will also be other factors such as privacy, security and complicated user interaction that need to be carefully integrated.
Entertainment Website Designs can be either quite simple or complex. Websites that simply provide a structure for video or audio files can be quite simple to design an easy to access structure. However, websites that aim to be entertaining themselves, such as gaming websites or other software types, can be more difficult to achieve an effective Design.
For business or corporate websites, the Web Design needs to look professional and convey the unique identity of the company. The design will incorporate the brand of the company, give a clear description of what the company does and also attract new business amongst its target market. Business websites can be either primarily for promotional, contact and marketing purposes or they can provide useful functions for the operational requirements of the company. A good Website Design will take into account the various requirements of the business to provide the required functionality and maintain a consistent identity for the company.
Websites that require the handling of payments can often require a more complicated structure to the Web Design. In most cases their will be a number of products or services available to customers that need to be set out on the site in a clear way that customers can find easily, as well as make the payment procedure as easy to complete as possible. Effective product placement of other products that customers may be interested in similar to the ones they are currently purchasing is a key and important technique.
Customer support websites can often be easier to produce an effective Web Design for, however they are also slightly different in function. The Website will need to process a large amount of incoming information, rather than outputting information to customers. The ability for customers to effectively and easily contact about and resolve issues they have will be key to the design, as well as the ability of the company to process the support requests of their clients.
Websites that require multi-purposes, some even including all these categories, will often have a much more complicated Web Design than website with only a single purpose. Although the Design may be more complex, the usability of the site will still remain as simple as possible. In fact, this is the main challenge of a website that includes many purposes; integrating all these purposes and functions into the website while at the same time making the site as quick and easy to use as possible for the target audience.
