The best of both worlds

Web design has come a long way over the past 5 years. With new technologies coming up, more bandwidth, and faster browsers, designers have had opportunities they have never had before. The emergence of new programming mediums such as video streaming, flash and CSS technologies have opened up new design concepts across the web. With new opportunities come more choices, and more possibilities to pass on information to the end user. As a result of these new opportunities, we as designers must decide on the most efficient ways to incorporate meaningful site design that will appeal to and engage end users. It has become a balancing act to effectively and creatively communicate the meaning of a web site while maintaining purpose and direction.

The biggest challenge, however, comes in when a site has to be optimised for search engines, which can affect the website’s design. Why does SEO affect design while design never affects SEO? Designers have to bend over for SEO, which can be very annoying.

I had a look at a friend’s website http://www.eccentris.com/splash.htm, which looks great and is very visually appealing. And guess what? It has never been optimised. One has to understand, however, that some site owners find the lack of SEO to be acceptable, such as in my friend’s case.

On the flipside, there are sites that focus on SEO and rely heavily on it for survival. But this can take a heavy toll on the design side of things, including site navigation and usability, etc. Regardless of the amount of incoming traffic, if the site is not well designed, it won’t be able to serve its intended purpose. If your purpose is to sell goods for instance, the design must give visitors enough confidence to buy! If this does not happen, clearly the website has failed.

To achieve an optimal balance between design and SEO, it’s best to plan the two simultaneously. A perfect plan will include well researched keywords, which are fitted into the design in the draft stages of the website. This really helps designers to fit all the keywords in. If this is not done, it can mean that we get keywords that are longer than the site allows, and this can be a great pain because it might mean that keywords have to be changed throughout the directory structure links across multiple pages. This can cause errors in the long run.

The web is big and the stakes are getting higher. If the overall goals are to be achieved, the website has to sell. In the cyber world, having a visually kick a** site with the ability to attract traffic is vital. Too much emphasis on one and not enough on the other can limit a website’s success, but a healthy blend of good SEO and good design will pave the path for success.