Web Services

Web Development vs Web Design

These two words are thrown around all time in the media, people use the terms interchangeably, however the two are quite different and its important that you know the difference between the two.  You would not call a Dr to come and fix your car now would you ?

Web Design is all about the aesthetic aspects of the website, the “pretty pictures”  the colours, graphics and the general look and feel.

Web Development involves the functionallity of the site and the overall experience the potential customer experience.

There are a few aspects to a website which, if neglected, will lead to an inefficient marketing tool, so here is some more in depth information about the various aspects :

  • Look and feel – primarily the graphics, color scheme, navigation elements, etc.
  • Content – information, products, etc available on the site.
  • Functionality – functionality includes interactive features that the web site provides to the visitors and the required infrastructure needed to provide them.
  • Usability – the site from a visitor’s perspective and includes things like program interactions, navigation and usefulness.

Look And Feel

Look and feel includes overall appearance of the website. A Graphic designer decides on what colors and fonts to use and how to layout each of the sites pages.

The graphic designer needs to have a good appreciation for aesthetics and feeling for what combinations of colors and imagery will create the image of the company that the customer will experience.

The graphic design function if fulfilled in house at InfinIT Solutions so we can offer advise from inception.

Content

Content is all of the text that is found on a website and includes everything from the privacy policy to product reviews and informtaion.  Under normal cirmustances you would need a copywriter and editor to create good content, however we are able to offer this service from within InfinIT Solutions.

Functionality

Functionality is all of the interactive aspects of a web site and includes animation, blogs, menu styling, content management systems and all the interactivity with the user.  Flash can be used to animate graphics. Perl, php and java are programming languages used on the web server to create sophisticated dynamic web pages. These pages can work independently but most commonly with a database to create all of the features we have come to expect from a website.

JavaScript is used in browser to create a lot of cool effects such as swapping images when a mouse moves over an image, “ticker tapes”, links changing colors, etc. JavaScript works in the user’s web browser rather than on the web server.

There are also other “backend” applications that are transparent to the visitor such as form processing, content management and other administration programs that make it possible for non-programmers to maintain some aspects of the website’s data.

All of these programs have to be integrated into the HTML code to be used on the webpage.

Usability

Usability is the website viewed from the user’s point of view and involves mostly testing things like:

  • Does the look and feel are actually portraying the proper image of the company?
  • Is the navigation is user friendly?
  • Does the navigation lead the visitor to where the owner wants them to go?
  • Does the site load quickly?
  • Do the applications work properly?
  • Is the site inviting ?