The Most Important Functions of Website Design - Literature review Example

Literature Review The first article, “Web site Design: What do you want to communicate?”, is written by Richard Lowe, Jr. and Claudia Arevalo-Lowe. The purpose of this article is guiding beginner web designer to design and create good quality and attractive websites. This article is clearly stated and easy to understand because the author uses an informal way of writing. The intention of this article is mainly to guide new web designers in designing websites. The article concentrates on the process of website design and how to communicate messages to websites visitors. Illustrations are also given in the article such as how to attract viewers by personalizing the sites with music, pictures and information. As a reader, this article - although it is short and written simply – interests and excites me because of the way the writer expresses his ideas. The tips and examples given are really informative and useful. The second article is also written by Richard Lowe, Jr.; it is entitled “Web site Design: Who is your audience?”. The article intends to scrutinize the arguments propounded by the writer in defining the group audience expected to view the site. The article is written in an informal style and is a clearly understandable piece of work. The objective of the article is for the new web designers and creators, as well as for the old amateur web designers, to be on familiar terms with their audience. The article is presented with tips and example of the possible procedures. What makes it more interesting is that the explanations and the evidences written in the article are based on the author’s own experience since the author is the Webmaster of the Internet Tips And Secrets. The examples and contents are well developed, organized and structured; the framework is also explained clearly. Therefore, as a reader, the tips are pretty interesting since the discussion concerns the contemporary issues like the quality and attraction and of websites; subjects that are in demand at the moment. “Don’t lose visitors because of poor site design”, the article written by Tony Murtagih, is the third article I wish to review. The intention of the article is to help people in avoiding common mistakes that novice as well as expert designers make. The clearly stated article and the simple, informal writing is addressed to the entire website designer. The main aspects of the article include how website design influences the visitors to stay browsing within a website. The writer, Tony Murtagih, who has ten years of experience in sales and marketing, also points out a few pieces of advice on what customers would find attractive and compel them to stay at least for a few minutes within the website. The article influenced me by providing clear tips regarding the stated issue, what enabled my understanding was the simple and easy way of writing that the writer employed. The fourth article “Designing Webliographies In An Effective And Simple Manner: A Step By Step Process” is written by Dariush Alimohammadi. The aim of the research, according to the article, is exploring structure, specifications and functions of online information systems and causes of the problem of information retrieval. Moreover, it also seeks to explain the outcomes of the situation as well as propose some linguistically based and IT oriented methods to solve such a problem, as well as to increase recall and precision in the process of information retrieval. The article is written in an understandable and easy, albeit formal, way from the abstract till the conclusion; it concentrates on the designers or maintainers of websites. The writer highlights how to design webliographies along with explaining the step-by-step process to be followed by the website designer. The writer also inserted a brief review about the past theoretical text on webliographies, through which we can better understand this topic. In terms of the structure, the writer does a very good job in stating his arguments which are made to the point. Finally, from a reader’s point of view, I consider this article interesting and easy to read as the content is organized, well developed and clearly expressed. The fifth article is written by Andrew LaPointe with the title “What color is your website?” This article discusses color, which he states is an important feature in the designing of a website as it can affect and influence the mood of the reader. Hence, the aim of the author in this article is to give guidance in designing an attractive website, mainly in choosing the right colors. This article is intended not merely for the novice but also for the expert web designer. Based on the writer’s experiences as the president and CEO of Your Online Business.com, as well as his position as the author of the internet course in Your Online business.com, the writer explains that color is almost certainly one of the most important parts in the designing process; color is taken as one of the ways of communication between the web designer and the visitor. In the article the writer listed the three primary colors – yellow, red and blue – as well as three secondary colors – orange, green and purple – both sets of colors evoking a broad array of emotions influencing a visitor’s sentiments about the website. The examples stated in the article are very interesting, as the tips given by the writer are helpful, to people who want to design a website. In addition to that, it is well structured, explained well, organized and well developed. The article has been written in an informal and persuasive style; the text is very clear, simple and easy to comprehend. “How to choose a web design service provider” is the sixth article in this assignment which is written by Denis published on the 29/07/2007. The aim of this article, as is apparent from its title, is to direct the website designers to choose a proper web design service provider. As I scanned through the article, I could not find the main purpose of this article as it did not clearly state the same. I also found it difficult to understand as too much technical terminology was used. However, I did understand that this article is intended for both commercial and advertisement website designers. The article instructs how to choose a web design service provider according to the writer’s assumptions and experience. The examples given in this article are poorly arranged, and the tips are difficult to understand and track for the reader. Although the article discusses the contemporary issue of how the website design service provider simply thinks of profits rather than the quality of website output, however, the way the writer presents the article is quite confusing. In addition, the article is unstructured, with the contents not clearly explained or organized. The article is written too informally; the texts are difficult to understand especially for beginners. There are also times where the author makes grammatical errors. Therefore, in my point of view, this article is not very good, however there is some information that can be construed as useful for some website designers. Bob McElwain writes the seventh article titled “What your perfect customer means to you.” It is written with the aim to instruct website owners what their customers mean to them. This article gives few guidelines regarding what should be done to create websites that fit the needs of the customers. The details are based on the author’s personal experience (the writer is a professional who wrote “Secrets To A Really Successful Website”). In this article, the author gives unclear examples; the contents are also not well organized and structured. As a reader, I was bored reading the article, even though the article is written informally and linguistically simple. Nevertheless, readers would find some information in it. The eighth article is “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0” written by Wendy Chisholm, Gregg Vanderheiden, Madison and Ian Jacobs. The article is regarding guidelines on how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. It is intended for all web content developers (including page authors and site designers) as well as for developers of authoring tools. The primary goal is to promote accessibility, however it also aims to provide ways through which web content is mode more available to all users – whatever user agent they might be using or constraints they may be operating under. This article uses a formal way of writing; the style and format influencing the reader in understanding its content. Readers can expect what the article is going to discuss from its abstract. As for its framing, it is well organized and developed. This article addresses two general themes in the guidelines, ensuring graceful transformation and making content understandable and navigable. The charts and pictures available in this article are carefully illustrated and reinforce the written content, while the explanations are based on references to documents from accessibility principles and design ideas. It seems that all the given information in this article is correct as the article has been reviewed by W3C Members and other interested parties. As it is a stable document, it is recommended as a source of reference material. Overall, I feel that this article is the most informative and reliable when compared with the other articles I have included here. It is written in an academic way and structured in an excellent style. Examples given are clear enough to provide the reader with an understanding towards what the writer wants to convey. Although the writer use difficult vocabulary, readers can manage to understand it. The ninth article written by Irnia Ponomareva is “How do you navigate without a map?”. The aim of this article is to guide web users, who failed to find what they were looking for, towards a clear and easy navigation option. The main theme of this article is regarding navigation websites. The explanations and the evidence are based on the author’s own experiences as a Webmaster, developer and an SEO specialist. The author puts forward slightly interesting points and tips, with the examples finely arranged and well stated. The article discusses the problems and difficulties web users are facing nowadays in navigating unstructured websites. As it is written in an informal style and simple texts is used, the reader would find it quite clear and easy to understand. The title of the tenth article is “Provider problems – What to do about unfinished web design, traffic or conversion projects” written by R.A. Murphy. The article offers general guidelines to clients on how to deal with web providers they hire. It is argued that nowadays the relationship between clients and web providers has gone sour due to unfinished or poorly done web projects. The purpose of this article to give guidelines is, however, not intended as legal advice. It is mentioned therein that the writer used his experience as someone who owns and runs the Internet marketing solution firm, RA Murphy & Company and has served clients by solving their traffic and conversion problems as well as finishing web projects left incomplete by others. The author gives some tips to the readers and as there are quite a lot of tips given, readers would find this article informative. As the contents are organized well, it is easy for readers to grasp it and develop new ideas with its help. The final article is “Business web site content strategy” written by Joel Walsh, a professional content writer and the founder of Upmarket Content. The aim of the article is to contribute some tips about effective ways on web site content strategy for the business website designers. In the article, the writer mentions four basic ways in which designers can get the content of their websites as well as what kind of content to be used. It is because content helps website designers to “talk” to visitors and ultimately get visitors to buy, contact and follow the link. The author uses well-structured writing, enabling readers to read on with interest. In addition, the informal style of writing makes it very clear and easy to understand for readers. Read More