Web design will seem to a lot of people like common sense, or something that a friend or colleague can put together in their spare time. This is often a false economy, resulting in sites that are difficult to maintain, do not appear when searched for, have hidden costs, or are simply not fit for purpose.

Web pages have a lot of things going on behind the scenes which affect the way they work, either for the end-user, the search engines or during amendments and maintenance.

A lot of this is down to using good web design techniques such as web standards, which are a set of guidelines used by (professional) web designers in order to make sure their sites are usable, accessible, and generally work well.

To help this process we have put together a set of guidelines to help you to make a better website. They are below.

• Increased accessibility: The web equivalent of putting wheelchair ramps on public buildings, this involves making sure that content is accessible to all users, whatever configuration they use. This includes partially sighted users, who may have their browser’s font size turned up (which will make a badly planned website unreadable) or even blind viewers, who use special browsers called screen readers to access web content.
• Search Engine Optimisation: A commercially significant reason to have an accessible site is that it also drastically improves search engine results. For example, Google’s web-crawlers (automatic programs which ‘read’ sites in order to determine their ranking) actually function almost identically to screen readers. A well designed website will vastly outperform a badly structured site, even if they look identical to a casual viewer.
• Ease of Maintenance: Web standards advocate the separation of content from layout – the way the site looks is kept in a different file (or section of the same file) from what the site says. This means that updating content, adding content or changing the look of the site will be much easier, saving time and money in the process.
• Improved Performance: A well designed website will also work better, which makes a huge impact to both the end-user and the client. For the end-user, pages load quicker and interactive content will work better. For the client, a well optimised, hand-coded site could mean a 90% drop in bandwidth costs.
• Forward Compatibility / Futureproofing: A standards-based site means that that site will display the same on all the major browsers, and will ‘degrade gracefully’ on non-standard software – meaning the content will still be usable even on a text based browser such as phones or other hand-held machines. It also means that it will be as ‘futureproof’ as possible, and easy to fix up even after many years of browser development.
• Visually Appealing: This list covers the many ways that a site can be technically well designed, but a client should also consider the implications of good interface and structural design – how easy the site is to use visually, and how it ‘flows’ as a site, allowing users to find what they are looking for as easily as possible, making their visit a pleasant one. These are crucial factors in getting visitors to return to the site.

How we can help

• Offering a full design package: We can work with a client from the start of a project in order to create a new site from scratch. Advantages of this include a streamlined workflow – any translation services can be planned into the project far in advance, so issues with individual languages can be addressed at the drawing board stage. This option will be more cost effective and straight forward than using separate design and localisation companies.
• Offer advice throughout the process: If the site is still being planned or built, but you would like to handle the design and execution either in-house or through another supplier, we can advise on localisation during this process. In this way, we could educate the client/designers about potential language issues that could arise from poorly planned design decisions. This in turn would make the translation stage simpler and more cost effective.
• Re-engineer an existing site: If you already have a site which needs to be translated it may be easier to re-engineer it. This could be anything from some tidying up of site structure or content prior to translation, to a complete reworking of an existing layout into a more suitable form.

To talk to K International about your global website strategies call us on 01908 572600, email info@k-international.com or use our contact page.