In contrast to most personal or recreational websites, a corporate website exists specifically to brand and promote a business and its’ services or products. These days, corporate web design is just as important to a company’s communication and marketing strategy, as a company’s press releases, regular adverts and other advertising literature. Among the key aspects of corporate website design are clear branding, compelling content and a user friendly layout.
The Internet is made up of numerous pages, displaying data using various technologies. These pages are connected to one another with hyperlinks. The two main components of any page that exists on the web are its’ presentation and its’ backend. The presentation is what the user engages with, normally on a visual level, whereas the backend features data intended for search engine bots. The standard markup language utilized to inform a browser about displaying webpage data is HTML (HyperText Markup Language). XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) is a stricter variation of HTML, which is commonly used as well.
For branding to be effective on a company’s website, the corporate logo, colors and font should be used consistently throughout the site, to make visitors associate this with the business. A company that wishes to present itself as friendly and warm may opt to display photographs of staff members helping customers, and happy faces. A company that wants to present itself as an innovative tech savvy operation may opt for features like a Flash introduction, and streaming audio and video footage. The right mixture of copy, graphics and colors will convey the desired impression.
Accessible and readable content is the most crucial part of a company’s website. Corporate web design which concentrates the visual appeal of a website, but fails to adequately display basic company details is not desirable. Visitors to the website ought to be able to quickly access details that will offer them an insight into the business. Usually, this data is arranged into categories like: About Us, Welcome, Contact Us, Media and Mission Statement. The text or copy on a corporate website should be concise and clear, with no corporate cliches or jargon.
Websites with long loading times, script errors or broken links, and which are hard to navigate, reflect poorly on the business overall. Over recent years, there’s been a trend towards segregating a webpage’s underlying HTML structure from the website’s visual appearance – using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). There are several big advantages to this approach over the long term and short term, so it is becoming more popular as time goes by.
