By: Taban Khajehnassiri
When there are lots of entertaining web sites out there, how can it be possible to encourage and lead people to move to artistic, educational, informative or industrial web sites? For human beings, entertainment is a real need and sometimes the most wanted, but it's the work of webmasters and site owners to regard it when they are constructing and designing their sites.
I believe that tough times for the world's big and small web players have
begun for a long time since the first web sites came online to stay, with
due respect to such a great amount and number of web sites and pages as
well as their online services and products increasingly adding to the net
not monthly, not daily, not even hourly but in the matter of seconds.
In the age of information and technology, it is true that money and time
are playing a big role in this game of servers and clients worldwide.
However, on the other hand, it is all about talents, brand new thoughts,
risks and patience when it is a rainy day to stay further and longer on
the net. In search of new and/or even more viewers for the web sites we
are investing on building up and maintaining, we have to pay due attention
to one serious subject as a real project and that is nothing but the
design of our web site. It is sometime or most of the times so complicated
and controversial to talk about web page design, especially when every web
designer try to defend and promote his/her own way of designing and
constructing a web site. However, I found - mostly from the net - that
analysts and professionals believe the marketing procedures and layouts
that work in the real world in print or even on TV, cannot and do not work
in the virtual space. There is a vital need for some new working
techniques and procedures to make online people really Click HERE and
THERE, going to desired web sites or pages. When there are lots of
entertaining web sites out there, how can it be possible to encourage and
lead people to move to artistic, educational, informative or industrial
web sites? For human beings, entertainment is a real need and sometimes
the most wanted, but it's the work of webmasters and site owners to regard
it when they are constructing and designing their sites. Suppose you are
designing a marketplace, a shopping center or a library for a town. In
your designs you have to note to the needs of those living in the area,
coming in and going out, that is why you will consider green environment,
playgrounds for the kids and rest rooms in different areas of your plans.
The first and maybe the best remedy for such complications and confusions,
I believe, can be a serious measure in building up and maintaining the
structure and the quality of services served and contents presented based
on viewers' requests. In search of viewers, you have to avoid setting up
disposable web sites. You want your web site to be used and visited only
once in a year? You asked for it, you got it! A web site must be
constructed just as a complex building, it should be beautiful - yes, but
it is not enough, it must be structured professionally and designed to
meet most needs of your target viewers. All I want to say is that we need
style, structure and architecture in establishing a house (here a Home
Page) online.
Even in architecture, we have to avoid constructing disposable areas for
instance, libraries, cinemas, museums and so on. Some say we have to
redesign and re-construct our web site(s) from time to time and because
that's the salt of life for us and our viewers. But I am not with this
point of view. Your viewers must become the users of your site not by any
chance but by your prepared plans and strategies. In this regard, I think
you have to have a longer plan for your web site. You just have to make
the site easy to use and clean from time to time, no need to demolish and
re-build it up again. Think twice! You are going to sell something that is
not touchable on the monitor it is just visible and readable. So you have
to build beauty, trust, emotions, imaginations all together. And that's
the job of a (web) designer. But you have to note that you are not going
to sell the whole knowledge of your web designer online. You are not about
to sell the technology you admire to use. Your viewers need soon reply,
soon respect, soon delivery and all these things, with high quality.
This article first published electronically as an editorial of WWN April 8, 2000.