Useful tips
Website layout — should only the creator of the site care?
published: 18.03.2009
Website construction consists of many stages: designing, website layout, database development, website programming, entering content, registration of the domain name, and website publishing.
Layout is a very important stage. It is executed in the course of conversion of the website design model (the image of the future webpage) into html-code. A bad website layout can ruin the whole website, be it expensive or not. Low quality layout leads to the incorrect display of the entire page in different web browsers, and even with different screen resolutions: the menu may ‘crawl' sideways or downward, the headings and titles may fall apart into separate blocks, etc.
In order to avoid such issues, a website creator should write the html-code correctly and verify its compliance with the standards — otherwise, the consequences may be unpredictable. A badly laid out website may turn off a visitor, a potential client.
Many studios claim that it is a website creator who should worry about the layout, while a customer has no need to think about it. We strongly disagree with this statement, and recommend to our customers to pay attention to the web construction process, in particular, to the following:
- Insist that your website works in all modern browsers and not only those recommended by a given studio. At the moment this article is written, the most popular browsers are Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Mozilla FireFox 3.0, Opera 9. The updated information can be easily found at any statistics website.
- Insist that your website be made in accordance with the latest regulations. For instance, 99% of websites created in conformity with the W3C consortium standards are compatible with all browsers including less popular ones, such as Google Chrome, Safari, etc.
- Request a printable version of your website is created. Many users prefer to print data (such as contacts, or catalogues) out, in which case neither the menu nor the special offers are needed on the printout.
- Monitor the web browsers market or consult with a competent web studio regarding the latest changes — in case of appearance of new browsers, upgrade your website layout in order to avoid any distortions of your site display in such browsers.