Good Web Design - An Introduction
Web design has developed dramatically in the 10 plus years of the popularity of the internet. Luckily we have been involved with web design for 10 of these years and understand the changes and the route to website design success. I will be posting a fuller guide to good web design on our website shortly, however this will show you some of the implications of your website and it's design.

Your website as a shop window
Websites have always provided this basic functionality and simple web design has often been implemented to show the world your business. The common term for these web designs is "brochure sites." It simply shows what your business does.
As these are the most basic of websites in terms of functionality, the web design that is implemented is now key, with the billions of other websites out there, and probably millions from businesses in the same line as yours. It is imperative that your website is developed in an attractive manner to both visitors and search engines. This is no mean feat and many do fail to find this holy grail of web design.
The technical side of this area of website design involves ensuring that your HTML and CSS code are written to standards. I will post shortly on this topic as it is more imperative than ever that your website meets these standards. All tags in your website should be properly formed, the CSS you write should ensure cross browser compatibility. Your pages need to meet structural requirements to achieve good search engine positions and possibly the biggest "no-no" of all. Do NOT, under any circumstances, build a website purely in Flash! Unbelievably there are still companies who will sell you an all Flash website design solution. You will very rarely be found!

E-Commerce / The Web Shop
Another popular area of web design is the online shop, or e-commerce website. As we all know, this allows you to trade directly with your customers, receiving payments online, via your website. Having an e-commerce website has implications as to the handling and security of card payments. This is too large a topic for this quick guide. Please contact me for more information on payment security. Designed properly an e-commerce web design will be easily updatable by the website owner, certainly as far as the product offering goes, and can even provide some level of self optimisation. Again, web standards need to be met to ensure the visitor's experience is a consistent one. The web design of an e-commerce solution can be slightly simpler. It doesn't rely the same on fancy graphics, the aim of the website is to sell products, and therefore the website design focus is to highlight those products in an easily navigable format. An e-commerce web design has to be very easy to navigate round, and should offer the customer all the options around a product, and ideally alternatives to a product that may mathc their requirement.

E-Business Web Design
What are we classing as the difference between e-business and e-commerce websites? An e-business web design can take the process one step further with tight integration with your back office. In laymans terms, your website can communicate with your other business systems, or offline business systems. A common example of this is that someone comes to your website to order a product, the order gets passed to your internal system, which automatically generates an order with your supplier. Obviously this level of website functionality isn't necessary for every business, however huge cost savings can be made with this level of automation. The key to this kind of website design is generally functionality. If you look at the big electrical retailers, their sites are rarely the prettiest of web designs, but they provide a purpose. An e-business website is really a blank canvas for your ideas, or the platform from which to launch very specific processes online.

Web Design Summary
Hopefully this very brief introduction to good web design may have enlightened you a little, or provoked some thought. Your website should always be designed around it's purpose. The website should never dictate the purpose. Your website is a key business tool, and should be treated in the same way as such. Few good websites do everything, but you need to decide does your website need to show the World what you do? Does your website need to sell to your clients? Or maybe your website needs to run your business or integrate with a system that does? Whether it be a marketing tool, a customer interaction tool, or your main outlet for products, your website needs to be designed in a way to reflect its purpose. One last thing I will let you ponder in this web design topic, is possibly the most profound theory in good website design - Content is King!