CHAPTER-1

AN INTRODUCTION TO WEBSITE DESIGN AND

DEVELOPMENT

1.1. WEBSITES

Website industry has become one of the fastest growing industries during the past few
decades in this world. With growing competitive market worldwide, website development
industry is playing a major role in this field. Maintaining an appropriate level of quality is a
prime challenge for the designers in developing a website. Over the past few decades,
research has passed through the various phases to predict quality of a website from a high
level design description. The quality of a website is directly inclined to the knowledge of
developer and the quality processes used during design and development. Developers need to
have thorough understanding of the website design and development process, website quality,
organization behaviour, technology upgrades and website standards / guidelines, etc. All
these factors come under the preview of ‘Web Engineering’ [1.1]. Web engineering proposes
an agile, yet disciplined framework for building industry quality web applications. In a virtual
round table conference published by IEEE, the Roger was successful in defining the relation
between software and web engineering. He states that software engineering concepts,
principles, and methods can be applied to web development, but their application requires a
different approach followed during the development of conventional software systems [1.1].

A website is a combination of different web pages linked together in a certain fashion

according to the designer’s will and organizational need served through the same domain
name server. The developed website is prepared and maintained by a person, group or an
organization. Website is typically written in XHTML and hosted on single web server for its
access through network. Each website is provided with a unique uniform resource locator
(URL) and accessed through the hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP) responsible for making
communication possible between client machine and the server by the application of different
browsers. The URLs of the WebPages are responsible for organizing website into a hierarchy
and the hyperlinks between them controls how the reader perceives the overall structure and
flow of traffic between the different parts of a website.
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Boon and Kurtz outline the concept of accessing website content as follow:

Websites provide hypermedia resources, a system allowing storage and access to text,
graphics, audio and video in so called pages linked to each other in a way that integrates
these different media elements. When a user clicks on a highlighted word or picture (icon),
the browser converts the click to computer commands and brings the requested new
information in the form of text, photograph, chart, song or movie clip to the user's
computer.

World Wide Web constitutes all publicly accessible websites. WebPages are accessed and
transported with the help of HTTP protocols which may sometimes optionally employ
encryption to provide security and privacy to the content and users. The HTTPS protocol is
used to provide secure access and needs subscription whenever any user want to visit
website. Due to advancement in technology the websites these days are viewed through
multiple platforms like desktop computers, laptops, PDAs and cell phones.

1.2 HISTORY OF WEBSITES

The Internet had its roots since 1960 as a project of the United States government's
Department of Defence, to create a non-centralized network. This project was called
ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), created by the Pentagon's
Advanced Research Projects Agency established in 1969 to provide a secure and survivable
communications network for organizations engaged in defence-related research. In order to
make the network more global a new sophisticated and standard protocol was needed. They
developed IP (Internet Protocol) technology which defined how electronic messages were
packaged, addressed, and sent over the network. The standard protocol was invented in 1977
and was called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). TCP/IP allowed
users to link various branches of other complex networks directly to the ARPANET, which
soon came to be called the Internet. In 1985, NSF began a program to establish Internet
access across the United States. They created a backbone called the NSFNET and opened
their doors to all educational facilities, academic researchers, government agencies, and
international research organizations. By the 1990's the Internet experienced explosive growth.
It is estimated that the number of computers connected to the Internet get doubled every year.
Businesses rapidly realized that, by making effective use of the Internet they could tune their

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operations and offer new and better services to their customers, so they started spending vast
amounts of money to develop and enhance the Internet. This generated violent competition
among the communications carriers and hardware and software suppliers to meet this
demand. As a result the bandwidth (i.e., the information carrying capacity of communications
lines) on the Internet has increased tremendously for its speedy access. In 1990, Tim Berners-
Lee of CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) developed the World Wide
Web and several communication protocols that form the backbone of the WWW. To access
websites Tim also wrote the first Web page editor/browser. By the end of 1990, the first Web
page was served and in 1991 people outside of CERN joined the new web community. In
April 1993 CERN took an historic decision that anyone can use World Wide Web technology
on royalty free basis. It makes possible for individuals and small businesses to get worldwide
contact. In the last decade, the Internet and World Wide Web have altered the way people
communicate, conduct business and manage their daily lives. The facility of websites has
changed the way we teach and learn, buy and sell, inform and are informed, agree and
disagree, share and collaborate, meet and love, and tackle problems ranging from putting
food on our tables to curing cancer. Tim Berners-Lee and others realized that for the Web to
reach its full potential, the underlying technologies must become global standards,
implemented in the same way around the world. Therefore, in 1994, Tim founded the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as a place for stakeholders to reach consensus around the
specification and guidelines to ensure that the Web works for everyone and that it evolves in
a responsible manner. W3C standards have enabled a single World Wide Web of information
and people, and an increasingly rich set of capabilities: Web 2.0 (personal and dynamic),
Web 3.0 (a semantic Web of linked data), Web services, voice access, mobile access,
accessibility for people with disabilities and for people speaking many languages, richer
graphics and video, etc. The Web Foundation supports the work of W3C to ensure that the
Web and the technologies that underpin it remain free and open to all. With over 1 trillion
public pages (in 2008) and 1.7 billion people on the Web (in 2009), we do not really
understand how these pieces work together and how to best improve the web in future. In
2005, Tim and colleagues started the Web Science Trust (WST). WST is building an
international, multidisciplinary research community to examine the World Wide Web as
“humanity connected by technology”. WST brings together computer scientists, sociologists,
mathematicians, policy experts, entrepreneurs, decision makers and many others from around
the world to better understand today’s Web and to develop solutions to guide the use and
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design of tomorrow’s Web. The Web Foundation believes in the discipline of Web Science
and is critically important for its advancement.

1.3 PLANNING A WEBSITE [1.2]

The most important activity in a website development is planning. To achieve higher success
of the website in terms of user satisfaction, better planning is needed. Before we start
developing a website, we should ask certain questions such as: Why are we developing this
website, What do we achieve by developing this website, Who are the people who will use
this website, What are the information contents, How are these contents organized, What are
the possible ways, How the files prepared are organized. Careful answer to all the above
questions leads to better planning and ultimately leads to successful website planning. These
steps can be applied in same manner to any specific type of website. The various steps
involved in planning a website in order to enhance its success rate are discussed below:

1.3.1 OBJECTIVE AND GOAL

There is always an objective behind every activity and same is the case with website
development. Many a times the success rate of the website decreases and desired results are
not achieved because of unclear objectives or purpose. If objective for developing Website is
clear, rest of the steps in planning will become easier. The Websites are developed for
different reasons. It may be to provide information and better services to customer, to update
the members in a community, to make citizens aware of government rules and regulations, to
increase the sell or to make the business online. Once the objective is clear, the other
activities in planning remain focused around it. Goal means the achievement from the website
development. The kind of benefit an individual or an organization gets from it is called value
addition. If a site is developed to provide information to the users, the goal should be user
satisfaction in terms of getting timely and accurate information. If it is business website, goal
is to increase in the sell. Both objective and goal of the website development should be clear
and in well documented form. It is also important to define the quantifiable measures to find
the success of the Website.

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1.3.2 AUDIENCE/USER PROFILE

Next step in website planning is to ‘identify the target audience’, i.e. the people for whom the
website is to be developed. It is very important to know about their background, educational
qualification, gender, age, likings and preferences. Even user profile affects the website
design e.g. children websites must includes cartoons and graphics with colors. For continuous
improvement, a feedback form is designed to get their requirements and views about the site.
This feedback can be used to improve the overall appearance of the site, presentation of the
content and navigation styles.

1.3.3 IDENTIFYING AND ORGANIZING CONTENT

The basic objective for any website is to provide the information in one or other form such as
text, image, audio, video, various forms etc. to the target audience. This information forms
the contents of the website. The content should be unambiguous, clear, spell checked, precise,
accurate, relevant, recent and matching to site objective. It should be well organized and must
fulfil the information need of the users. Once the information is identified and collected, the
next important activity is to prepare storyboard that includes the page layouts, their logical
groupings and the navigation choices. Either paper based approach is used or we can use the
flowchart software to prepare it. We can also use particular structure depending upon the
contents, user needs and navigation choices.

1.3.4 PUBLISHING
After the contents are ready, following steps needs to be performed before website is publicly
accessible:

I. Implement each page using suitable technologies on client (HTML, XHTML, CSS and
JavaScript) and server side (Servlets, JSP, ASP, PHP, Perl).
II. Organize the files containing WebPages and other contents like images into proper
directory structure so that future modifications become easy.
III. Test your individual pages and their links on local machine so that once launched it will
work properly.
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IV. Register your domain name, e.g. www.myweb.com with appropriate ISP providing
hosting services.

1.4 WEBSITE STRUCTURE

In Wikipedia website structure is defined “as an approach to the design and planning of
websites which involves technical, aesthetic and functional criteria”. Proper structuring of a
website and breaking them into sub sections on the basis of file type and subject matter is
very important. Website structure refers to the framework in which the information or content
of a website employs for both usability and presentation. It is a distributed network of links
that ties your website together. The website structure describes the functional shape of a
website in terms of content presentation. It is the framework that shapes your site and defines
your website navigation scheme. A website generally has a root directory and several sub
directories which makes it easier for navigation. As the web has matured over the past
decade, the structure of web pages in text-driven information sites has become more uniform
and predictable. The below given Fig.1.4.A shows a website's basic structure which is
composed of three main sections: The homepage, the main sections and the subsections, each
of which can be easily accessed by the visitor.

Figure 1.4.A: Typical Basic Website Structure

This type of website structure enhances the flow of information through its content and even
helps visitors in easy access. It also provides the webmaster with an easy means of organizing

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blocks of data within the site. As shown in Fig.1.4.B,[1.3] the website structure includes text,
Links and graphic elements as building block of a web interface. Page and site level features
use these elements to improve the user’s experience. All the above given parameters need to
be carefully measured while designing a website. Yet few parameters like page loading
speed, technological support, website openness, data storage and retrieval techniques need to
be examined while designing a quality website to give user a thorough navigation of the
website in a small amount of time. In addition websites timely updation is also one of the
major issues for academic institutions and commercial websites [1.4].

Figure 1.4.B: Website Structure

1.5 WORKING OF A WEBSITE

192.168.1.4 192.168.1.4
DNS Web
SERVER Browser
Google.com SERVER
192.168.1.4
www.google.com HTML pages

Webpage www.google.com

User
Figure 1.5.A: Working of a Website

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The above given Fig.1.5.A shows the working of a website. As we are aware, the World
Wide Web works on client server model where the user computer acts as a client for sending
and receiving data from the server. When a user requests the Web page, the browser
employed by the user requested the server and by fetching and interpreting the requested
files, displays it on users screen. Although the working of the website is not as simple as it
seems, numbers of internal functions are to be performed before a webpage appears on the
user screen. The whole process completes in three steps: contact to DNS server, contact to
server and rendering. The rendering of a web page further includes following functions like
loading HTML, parsing, apply styles, construct frames, frames layout and frames painting.
After the successful completion of all above given steps the desired web page is displayed on
the users screen. All these steps are executed in a flash of a second by making a user to obtain
results in a desired amount of time.

1.6 WEBSITE IMPORTANCE AND USES

Searching for information is one of the most important uses of websites, which makes it most
valuable tool in various aspects of life. Websites are considered as the most powerful source
of knowledge. The websites are utilized for various purposes like Web surfing, Email and
chatting, Social Networking, Videos, Online Business, Searching Jobs, News and
Information, Classified Ads, Blogs, Downloads, Online payments, Online Banking, File
sharing, Online games, Online Dating etc. Websites these days are acting as an international
marketing agents and one of the most important asset of an organization. It creates an
opportunity for all organizations in this world big or small to make their global presence.
Following points given below supports importance of websites as an international marketing
agent:

 Open for Business 24 Hours a Day.

 Reach New Markets With a Global Audience.
 Nerve Centre for the Global Economy.
 Present a Professional and Credible Image.
 Improved Customer Service.
 Save Money on Printing and Distribution Costs.

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 Create A Product Or Service Showcase.
 Automation, Productivity, and Profitability.
 Sell Your Products and Services Online.
 Stability.
 Your Own Internet Identity.
 Promote Your Services.
 Customer Feedback.
 Worldwide Exposure.
 Great Recruiting Tool.
 Transfer Information to Branches and Affiliates.
 Viral Marketing without a Marketing Cost.
 Improve Your Advertising Effectiveness.
 Educate Your Customers.

1.7 CATEGORIES/TYPES OF WEBSITES

It is very difficult, rather impossible to categorize websites on the basis of certain parameters.
A vast variety of websites exists these days, relevant to the specific purpose. Moreover,
several types of categorizations still exist, but broadly they are categorized on the basis of
techniques and technologies involved in its access and the purpose for which it has been
developed. Based on different functions, utility, technology, behaviour and access methods
the websites are categorized into two broader aspects given below:

1.7.1 CATEGORIZATION BASED ON UTILITY/FUNCTIONS

Different types of websites are available depending upon the context of their utilization.
There are many varieties of websites, each specializing in a particular type of content or use,
and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications
might includes: Affiliates, Archives, Blogs, Content sites, Commercial, Community,
Database, Dating, Directory, Job, Gaming, Informative, Computing, News, Personal
homepages, Political, Review, Educational, Search Engine, Portals, Social Networking,

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Government etc. But the major categorization based on its popularity and utility are: Social
Networking, Educational, Government, Commercial and Job portals.

1.7.2 CATEGORIZATION BASED ON TECHNOLOGY / BEHAVIOUR

/ACCESS METHOD

In this section websites are divided into two broad categories Static and Dynamic
(interactive). Static sites serve or capture information but do not allow engagement with the
audience directly. Dynamic websites also called as interactive sites and allows interaction
between different types of the users and the organizations. Static website is the one that sends
web pages to the client machine through web browsers exactly in the format in which they
are stored on a server. It is primarily coded in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The
static websites are quick and cheap to develop and easy to host. Dynamic websites on the
other hand are more expensive to develop initially, but it gives owner the ability and
flexibility to update and add new content to the site at its own. The dynamic websites
supports two different strategies for access, dynamic code and dynamic content. The websites
with dynamic code is constructed dynamically on the fly using active programming language
instead of plain and static HTML. The web pages are generated on the fly by piecing together
certain blocks of code, procedures or routines. A dynamically generated web page would
recall various bits of information from a database and put them together in a pre-defined
format to present the reader with a coherent page. In dynamic content the variable content is
displayed dynamically on the fly based on certain criteria, usually by retrieving content stored
in a database. A website with dynamic content refers to how its messages, text, images and
other information are displayed on the web page and more specifically how its content
changes at any given moment. The web page content varies based on certain criteria, either
pre-defined rules or variable user input.

1.8 WEBSITE DESIGN

Different people have defined the term “quality” differently [1.5]. Phil Crosby (Cro79) have
described quality is “conformance to user requirements.” Watts Humphrey (Hum89) refers
the quality as “achieving excellent levels of fitness for use”. More recently, quality has been
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defined in (ISO9001-00) as “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils
requirements.” Quality of a website is major factor which forces the designers/webmasters to
design website strictly according to the user’s requirements. Stakeholder’s involvement in
designing websites plays major role that results into the production of user centric websites.
The factors which influence the website developers during its design phase are cultural
manifestation, Gender, Language and Technology. Websites needs to be developed after
taking into consideration all the quality criteria associated with the design and development
of the websites. Performance of the website depends on various factors of design and
development like Content, Accessibility, Global presence, Hyperlinks, Human computer
interface, Attractiveness, Visual style, objective, Colour combination, Graphics, Fonts,
Convey information, Page layout, Texts, Paragraph formatting, Images, Lists, Icons,
Navigation, Updated information, Page loading speed, Security, etc. Careful handling of
these parameters leads to the production of quality websites. Different
researchers/academicians have worked on different parameters. Yet no standard organization
has come up with a consolidated report which includes all the parameters given above
required while designing a quality website which meets the user requirement in every aspect.
There are no clear methods available and the existing development process did not follow
any proper guidelines. Moreover different developers follow their own criteria’s while
designing a website. It can be practically tested that if we access more than one educational
websites of a university you will find that every website will be different in graphical user
interface, data retrieval and storage techniques although the organizational structures remains
same for all of them. In our study main focus is given on quality attributes given above while
designing a website under various categories and put forward the guidelines to develop a
website more acceptable to different categories of the users.

Website design is a critical issue for its success and influenced by various environmental
issues such as browser support, bandwidth of the connection, cache support and display
resolution of the monitor. Look and feel also determines the overall appearance of the
website to a greater extent. The website theme, fonts, graphics and colours need to be
carefully chosen. The presentation of information should be clear and easy to access. Page
templates are used to design individual pages using grid structure and distribute the content
for quick view and easy access. Design of the website is to be done after considering various
user requirements and choices to make it user centric. Website planning is most important

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activity in preparing an effective website design. Navigation is the most important design
element that makes website clear, consistent, meaningful and understandable. Website
design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance
of websites. The different area of web design includes graphic design, interface design,
standardised code, proprietary software and search engine optimization. The term web design
is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end (client side) design of
a website including writing mark up. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the
broader scope of web development.

1.9 WEBSITE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Design and development process consists of six phases that includes Project Definition, Site
Structure, Visual Design, Site Development, Testing and Launch. A brief structure of each
phase is described in the Figure 1.10.A. [1.7]

Fig.1.10.A: Web Design and Development Process

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During website design process more attention needs to be given in designing the homepage.
Attributes of the homepage needs to be carefully studied because it is the place from where
user starts its navigation. When a user enters a site’s URL in a browser, the home page of the
site will appear. After that the engineers begin to develop the background application, and
then test the website. This procedure avoids design rework and improves efficiency. The
design flowchart is shown below in Figure 1.10.B[1.8]. Poorly designed websites can lead to
loss of productivity and revenue. Although there are books filled with web design guidelines,
but there exists a huge gap between its consistency and implementation. Furthermore,
guidelines tend to conflict, and they offer the same advice for all types of websites, regardless
of their purpose. Finally, guidelines require careful study and practice and need to be familiar
to the occasional web designer.

Figure 1.10.B: Design Flowchart

1.10 WEBSITE DESIGN ISSUES

Let us consider the common issues that are applicable in designing effective websites which
are portable on different browsers, attractive in terms of colours and graphics, rich in
contents, easy to read and navigate and downloads faster. The various website design issues
which influences the performance of the website are discussed below in next section.

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1.10.1 BROWSER COMPATIBILITY

Browser compatibility determines the website behaviour on different browsing platforms.

Today the commonly employed browsers are internet explorer, chrome, mozilla-firefox and
opera. It is specified as a design parameter in W3C guidelines document UAAG 2.0. Since
each browser has its own way rendering and displaying the contents of a web page. So the
web pages must be designed in such a way that it can be supported by each of the commonly
employed browser. Almost hundred different types of browsers are available these days
making it difficult for the designers/webmasters to develop websites with similar behaviour
on multiple platforms. Strict adherence to the design guidelines may fulfil this criteria upto
certain level.

1.10.2 TECHNOLOGY

Another important parameter that is of great concern during the web development process is
technology as specified in W3C guideline document WAI-ARIA 1.0. By technology we
mean the operations and activities that are executed at the client side and the server side.
Common server/client side scripting programs and languages includes HTML, CSS,
XHTML, AJAX, JavaScript, Flash, JSON, PHP, CGI, XML /XSL, PERL, MySQL, etc.

1.10.3 WEBSITE SIZE

The size determines the amount of memory required by the websites for its storage. The
various components of the website that contribute to the size include HTML, JavaScript,
CSS, static images, CSS images etc. The size of a website plays very important role for the
user with optimal connection speed. The websites must be designed in such a way that they
can be downloaded with the same ease by the user with least connection speed. With the
advent of various multimedia applications it becomes very difficult for the
designers/webmasters to restrict website size under the recommended standards/guidelines.
Today 100kB limit is still a great rule of thumb

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1.10.4 COLOUR COMBINATION

Colour is an equally important factor in webpage design considerations. Choosing

inappropriate colour combination in website design can have devastating effects. These days
people are working a lot on website accessibility .So in order to cater to the need of the user
of each category it is highly required that we must make web sites which will be accessible to
the peoples suffering from different type of visual impairments. According to a survey
conducted by Institute of Colour Research, a large section of consumers make a quick
assessment of a product within one and a half minute and the base of this quick assessment is
its colour combination [1.9]. So during colour selection in website the W3C accessibility
guidelines given in WCAG 2.0 in guideline 1.4(Distinguishable) must be followed in order to
improve the website visibility for all stake holders.

1.10.5 PAGE LOADING SPEED

Website page loading speed optimization is an important factor in its design process. If your
website takes too long time to load, potential users will quickly move on to your other
competitive website. Fast loading time means higher visitor engagement, visitor retention,
and ultimately a higher conversion rate. Page loading speed is inversely proportional to the
size of a web page.

1.10.6 SITEMAP

Sitemap provides different ways through which a website can be visited and explored. It also
helps the visitor to locate its current position on website and multiple paths through which the
website can be navigated. Site map check the navigation facility on the website as prescribed
in W3C document WCAG 1.0 guidelines in priority 2 checkpoints 13.3. It also provides the
users with the graphical representation of Web pages on Web Site.

1.10.7 HYPELINKS
Hyperlinks help the visitors in locating information of their choice and also provides users
with the gateway to move from one page to another on a website. Arrangement of hyperlinks
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in certain fashion determines the performance of a website. The number of hyperlinks on a
webpage determines total navigation facility from a site. Hyperlinks also play important role
in search engine rankings. So the designers/webmasters must avoid the presence of broken
links on websites and design websites strictly according to the W3C guidelines recommended
in document WCAG 2.0.

1.10.8 WEBSITE SECURITY

Cyber crime has impacted the world’s largest organizations and it can also damage anyone’s
business. Information systems security is a very important consideration during software
application development process. Security of a website is most important aspect which
preserves user’s privacy. These days’ users perform all activities online where the chances of
data theft are more, which may prove hazardous and avoid users to further use the insecure
websites. Users trust is directly influenced by the security of a website. the
designers/webmasters should design websites strictly according to the design guidelines
prescribed in W3C guideline document WSC-UIG 1.0 in order to make website secure on all
aspects.

1.10.9 AUDIO VIDEO AIDS

Websites must be developed in such a way that it remains accessible to dynamic categories of
the user worldwide. Design must be supported with various audio-video aids so that can also
render service to visitors with different kinds of disabilities like visual auditory, Physical,
Speech, Cognitive and Neurological. Some of the tools that must accompany website are
screen readers, screen magnifiers, tabbing, speech synthesis etc. To make website effective
for users, it must be designed according to the design guidelines prescribed in W3C-WAI
document published in WCAG 2.0.

1.10.10 FEEDBACK

Providing customers with a feedback loop, allows organizations to make websites more user
friendly and engaging. It is also an essential part of effective learning. Therefore the need of

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providing feedback option in a website is of vital importance and must be included during its
design and development as prescribed in W3C guideline document WCAG 2.0.

1.10.11 SEARCH

Site Search allows a visitor to track how people use your website’s internal search engine. It
also helps the users to know about the information of their choice through after entering
keywords into the search option. Providing customers with a search facility allows
organizations to make their websites more user-friendly, engaging, and consequently improve
profits. Websites must be provided with the search option within the site according to the
design guidelines prescribed in W3C document WCAG 2.0

1.10.12 OPERATING SYSTEM

The different operating systems and their versions greatly affect the way a page is rendered.
The support for different tags also varies across the different operating systems and their
versions. The web technology is moving from HTML to XHTML. Older versions of
operating systems may not support recent tags and features. Same browser may work slightly
different on different operating systems and hardware platforms. Hence, the operating system
is a critical issue which needs to be taken care of during design of a web page.

1.10.13 BANDWIDTH AND CACHE

Bandwidth and Cache are also considered as the most important aspects of website design.
Users have different connection speed i.e. bandwidth for accessing websites. It is very
difficult to open websites with too many images on low bandwidth. Generally users have no
patience to wait for longer time and move to other site without looking at contents of a web
page. Browsers provide temporary memory called as cache to store the graphics. When a
page is demanded by a browser for its first time, the images downloaded are stored in the
cache area of browser for a specific time as per user’s preferences. When next time the same
page is demanded then only HTML files are downloaded and the browser uses all the images
from the cache which increases the download speed significantly. Cache also plays very

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important role in webpage download speed, so careful attention needs to be given while
designing a webpage as far as cache of the browser is concerned.

1.10.14 DISPLAY RESOLUTION

Display resolution is another important factor affecting the web page design, as we don’t
have any control on display resolution of the monitor on which user view our pages. Display
or screen resolutions are measured in terms of pixels and common resolutions are 800 x 600
and 1024 x 786. With the reduction in cost of large size monitors 1240 x 1024 will become
common in near future. Today most monitors are using resolution of 1024 x 786 pixels.
However many old monitor are working on 800 x 600. Considering the different resolutions,
we have three choices for web page design.

I. Design a web page with fix resolution say 800 x 600.The web page properly fits into a
screen with this resolution but leaves some part of the screen if the resolution is 1024
x 786. On the other side, if the design is fixed to use 1024 x 786 pixels, it will not fit
into the screen having 800 x 600 resolutions.

II. Make a flexible design using HTML table to fit into different resolutions. Web page is
divided into three columns with middle column having a variable width. Depending
on the resolution of monitor on which page is viewed, it changes its width. However,
challenge is to design that part in such a way that on different screen resolutions, the
content remains in proper viewable form.

III. If the page is displayed on a monitor with a higher resolution, the page is displayed on
left hand side and some part on the right-hand side remains blank. We can use
centered design to display page, e.g. in middle of the screen, leaving equal space on
both the sides of the page.

We should also consider a point that when a page is seen on print media and screen media, it
differs in colors due to different nature of both. While designing a page we have to keep in
mind that it is to be displayed on screen media and accordingly the colors should be chosen.

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1.10.15 LOOK AND FEEL

Look and feel decides the overall appearance of a website. It includes all the design aspects
such as website theme, web typography, graphics, visual structure, navigation etc. some of
the aspects we have already discussed in above topics and few of them we will refer in this
section. During website design the website look and feel needs to be given special focus
because it is the only parameter which is concerned with every types of dynamic user. Web
typography is very important issue and includes different aspects like fonts, graphics and
colour. They are important from both scanning and reading point of view as they express the
structure as well as emotion. Consider the following important points while choosing the
typeface for your website.

I. Different fonts have different readability and it directly affects the user psychology.
II. Maintain consistency in using the font type and size. Don’t use too many fonts with
too many sizes. Use of CSS helps in maintaining consistency.
III. Consider the availability of font on visitor’s machine. If the font used in web page is
not installed on visitor’s machine, browser use default font, Times New Roman.

1.10.16 PAGE LAYOUT AND LINKING

Website consists of individual WebPages that are linked together using various navigational
links. Page layout defines the visual structure of the page and divides the page area into
different parts to present the information of varying importance. Page layout allows the
designer to distribute the contents in a page such that visitor can view it easily and find
necessary details. While designing the page layout designers/webmasters should keep
following points in mind:

I. While distributing the content in layout, balance between text and graphics. Too much
graphics may lead to slow down the page.
II. Locate the items on the page using screen importance to attract the user’s attention on
important items.
III. Maintain consistency among the layout of the pages such that it creates cohesive
design of Web site matching to your theme.

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IV. Once the page layouts are prepared, we have to link them together to provide the
navigation paths consistently so that the user can find the desired information quickly
and easily.

1.10.17 USER CENTRIC DESIGN

It is very difficult for web designer to predict the exact behaviour of the website user.
However, idea about behaviour of common user helps in making design of the web site user
centric. Users either scan the information on the web page to find the section of their interest
or read the information to get the details. If the information is provided for reading, e.g.
article of an online magazine or news paper site, then user’s general reading habit gives the
idea of how to organize such information. People normally read from left-to-right and top-to-
bottom. Hence we can organize such contents in column fashion on a web page. The link in
table of contents change colours once visited, so user get an idea of which link have been
visited and which are yet to be visited.

1.11 STUDY AREA

The preliminary study area is focused on the analysis of different types of websites available,
traditional software development models and website design methodologies. On later stages
the study is conducted to identify various website design issues which plays vital role in
website design and development. Common users and designers opinion is collected to know
about current status of websites and level of improvement still required in producing user
centric websites. The various standards/guidelines recommended by W3C and other
organizations are referred and their relevance in website design is also explored. After going
through all the methodologies given above a model is proposed which deals with different
aspects of website design and development. Website quality is assessed through searching
various types of websites, user behaviour and looking into it for various parameters required
for its user acceptable design. No clear methods are available and till date boundaries are not
defined that which type of website category requires what types of parameters for its effective
design. This is evident from the fact that different types of websites are concerned with
different types of target users. Moreover till date not even a single model is available, which

20
is specifically meant for website design and development. Websites are being developed after
introducing small changes in already existing traditional software development models
leading to the production of poorly designed websites.

Different website quality parameters like Content, Accessibility, Global presence,

Hyperlinks, Human Computer Interface, Attractiveness, Visual style, Motivation, Objective,
Colour Combination, Graphics elements, Fonts, Convey information, Page layout, Texts,
Paragraph formatting, Images, Lists, Icons and Navigation are playing very important role in
website design and development and are presently used to benchmark the quality of a
website. The other factors undertaken for the study are cultural manifestation, Gender,
Language and Technology. These factors also influence the designers / webmasters to a
greater extent at initial stage of design and thus form the basis of website development
process. The role of human aspect at each level, from development of a website, to its
implementation also forms the part of study.

Based on the study and comparison of various categories of websites available, their
characteristics and limitations, an effort was made to identify the requirements for each
category of the website. After this the design and development issues for different categories
of websites was studied and proposed, which take care of the limitations and satisfy the
quality requirements of different types of websites. Finally a general model for design and
development of different categories of the websites is proposed to take care of common users
and designer’s opinion, different website design issues and website design guidelines /
standards. An effort was also made to develop automated methodology to help designers /
webmasters to strictly adhere to the guidelines recommended by W3C and other
organizations responsible for building beautifully designed websites.

1.12 JUSTIFICATION

Although the current available website categorization and concerning parameters for its
design and development do address the quality concerns of the website, yet there are number
of quality issues which needs to be refined and various parameters required to mark the
boundaries for the design and development of various categories of websites still need to be
addressed fully. Website designs do possess number of drawbacks particularly the quality
parameters and user acceptability, which ultimately lead to poor website design and

21
development. There is a strong view that design and development of website must address
different website categories and design issues, common user’s requirements and design
guidelines / standards. Most of the present websites have serious flaws and no proper
methodology exist for developing them under various categories. It is, therefore, difficult to
use the existing framework to set precise and specific quality requirements. Designers /
Webmasters are not adhering to the set standards / guidelines which may be used for
developing quality websites. At the same time it is also true that existing methodologies are
also incomplete as for as quality of the websites to be developed is concerned. Till date not
even a single automated tool is available which help the designers / webmasters in evaluating
websites during its design phase. Thus existing methodologies along with the parameters of
quality design leave a scope for further research which the investigator intends to take to
improve the website design and development process.

1.13 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The researcher under takes to carry the research with the following aims and objectives:-
I. To differentiate between the traditional software development and website
development process models.
II. To find out various drawbacks and loopholes in traditional software development
models and existing website development methodologies.
III. Design of relevant website development phases, for introducing them in initial
framework proposed for website development. The testing of these phases regarding
their presence and absence in already existing website development methodologies
also needs to be done.
IV. To propose an initial framework for website development by including all those
phases which are missing in earlier development models.
V. Study various loopholes and drawbacks in website design and their effects on quality
and accessibility of website.
VI. Identification of different quality attributes constraints and design parameters required
in each category for developing various types of websites by visiting various websites,
parent organizations, web development houses and feedback from different users and
designers / webmasters.
VII. To find out the current status of various categories of websites w.r.t. various design
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 issues.
VIII. To study various web design guidelines / standards recommended by W3C and other
organizations and their relevance in website design and development.
IX. To establish relation between common users and designers opinion on website design
issues in various kind of websites.
X. Ways and means for the improvement of website design and development.
XI. Study loopholes, drawbacks and relevance of various automated tool available for
online testing of various website design issues in different kinds of websites.
XII. Design and development of Automated Methodology to help designers / webmasters
to study various types of website design issues.
XIII. Suggest Tools & Technologies for various categories of websites.
XIV. Suggest various design parameters to be considered while developing different
categories of websites.
XV. A common model for Design and Development of various categories of websites.
XVI. Any other suggestion as per findings.

1.14 WEBSITE DESIGN A KEY FACTOR FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS

[1.10]
Design is considered to be the most important factor in the success of different categories of
the websites on multiple platforms. Different researcher’s discussed website design as a key
factor and needs to be addressed critically during its design phase. Web design has been
identified as a key factor for the acceptance and success of a website. Different researchers
have analysed the website design from a marketing point of view and feels that it could
influence online users’ behaviours and perceptions in order to achieve its goal. An extensive
literature survey was performed emphasising the special role of web design during different
users’ interaction with website interface. In addition to this, the methodology related to
benchmarking also allows different organizations to know the best practices and to learn
some key factors for developing their businesses online. From different literature survey it
has also been confirmed that the web design is a key factor for getting positive outcomes as it
influences common users and online customers’ behaviours and perceptions. An effective
website design addressed to simplicity and freedom of navigation which provides clear,

23
accurate and timely information in all its contents and appearance that calls for the users’
attention. There are number of different web design standards/guidelines that could improve
the design regarding its aesthetic sense, appearance, navigation, information and content. It
could be interesting to analyse empirically different impact of all the key attributes on the
users’ behaviours and perceptions. This is one of the first studies of this kind which explain
how a website must be designed from different users’ perspective. The analysis of the user
perceptions could help designers/webmasters to design website that best matches the user
needs.

1.15 RELEVEANCE OF WEBSITE DESIGN AND USABILITY [1.11-

1.40]
The design of a website has been widely studied from multiple points of view. Most of them
have identified the factors that could determine the degree of acceptation of a website. With
the passage of time various researchers worked and contributed towards the field of website
design. (Hoque and Lohse in 1999, Childers et al in 2001, Liang and Lai in 2002, Kim and
Stoel in 2004, Wilde et al in 2004, Go¨rn et al in 2004, etc). According to Cato, (2001)
designing is the process of creating a disciplined structure which is planned, artistic, coherent,
purposeful, and useful for various stakeholders. From consumer perspective, a website must
be designed in such a way that it must include all those features which satisfy different users
and enhance their online visits and purchase intentions. The internet and the electronic
commerce evolves different point of view and try to determine the key factors in website
design. The study says that website usability defines the presence of those elements which a
website must have, so that the consumer can manage it easily. Nielsen in 1994 defines the
usability of a website is the ease with which a user can learn to manage the system, memorise
the basic functions, enhance efficiency, avoid degree of error and satisfy different categories
of the users. Nielsen in 2003 defines the usability as the quality attribute that assesses the
ease with which a user can use websites interfaces and can identify different dimensions like
learning ability, efficiency, errors and satisfaction. In 2002, Ranganathan and Ganapathy
define usability and suggested that it can be taken as a tool for measuring the quality of a
website. In other words usability can improve the understanding of contents and tasks that
consumer has to know for achieving his goal. Muir and Moray in 1996 discussed that
usability reduces the chances of error and help in improving the levels of trust among users.
Usability is also related to the consumers’ ability of identifying the best possibilities of
24
navigation through a given website. According to Desmet and Hekkert in 2007, design
factors of a website are concerned in providing not only beauty and appeal, but also high
levels of usability which influences the affective states of different categories of the users.
Cristo´bal in 2006 authenticated that a well-designed website always ensure a high level of
usability. In 2008 Flavia´n and Gurrea defines that an attractive design can evoke the feelings
of pleasure of using a website. Researchers defines that, adequate degree of usability relates
to a comfortable atmosphere and creates a positive impression in consumers. Three authors
Flavia´n et al in 2006, Kim and Eom, in 2002, Chen et al. in 1999 discussed that good level
of website usability may leads to higher levels of satisfaction, trust and loyalty towards a
specific website. From the above facts we could note that usability and website design are
highly correlated. The study carried out by Keeker in 1997 proposed several guidelines to
encourage the ease of using a website. The author conducted his study on a well-known
group of online firms to identify the key aspects like content of a website (i.e. information,
media, animation, sound, graphics), the ease of use (i.e. users, navigation, feedback), the
promotion of the content (i.e. location, frequency of updates), the specific content related to
media (i.e. community, customization) and the affective response of the consumer. In a
similar way, the Palmer in 2002 proposed and validated different measures of websites’
usability and design and further identified various aspects related to the download delay,
navigation, and content. The authors also established the characteristics between various
determinants related to success of a website like customized appearance, contents and the
presence of feedback for communication between vendor and consumer. Baker in 1986,
Donovan et al. in 1994, Spies et al. in 1997, Turley and Milliman in 2000 discussed about
research on marketing literature and show how the factors that define the store environment
influence the consumer’s mood and purchasing behaviour. Eroglu et al. in 2001 discussed
about design factors related to visual cues which includes layout and colour. They are
considered as the important factors for getting a positive response from the consumers to
facilitate their goals. Dailey in 2004 defines web atmospherics as the intended design of web
environments to generate positive effects among consumers. In this sense, Van der Heijden
and Verhagen in 2003 examined the image elements in a virtual store that could increase the
purchase intentions in the user and identified the most important factors of website design.
The study carried out by Kim and Stoel in 2004 demonstrated that the factors of web
appearance can lead to higher consumer satisfaction. Melia´n and Padro´n in 2006 define the
development of a good website design and determine it as the key factor of success. In
25
website design, the literature has also revealed that visual aspects also play an important role
in website success. Specifically, Dailey in 1999 and Eroglu et al. in 2001 analysed the
influence of web atmosphere on consumers and verified that the insights of this atmosphere
influence the cognitive and affective states of the consumer. Tan and Wei in 2006 proposed
that the appearance of a website is an instrumental factor that improves the perception of
information. More specifically, these authors suggest that the graphical representations such
as icons, colours, images and animations, give website a higher degree of vividness. Zhang et
al. in 2000 discussed about the facts that could improve the degree of individuals’ satisfaction
with the web page and the navigation sensations. A major part of the literature also marks the
relevance of different aspects of a website design such as an appropriate appearance, ease of
navigation, ease of use, security, privacy, content and information. These factors determine
the consumers’ behaviour and website success in e-commerce context. However, it seems
remarkable that the relative lack of consensus in the literature about the management of
various factors related to website design and usability instigates different researchers and
academicians to consequently work upon the development of a series of guidelines in order to
design interfaces that satisfy the users and organizations’ needs.

1.16 CHALLENGES IN WEBSITE DESIGN

Developing website is one of the most challenging processes in computer science and the
instant worldwide audiences make its quality and reliability crucial factors in its success
[1.41]. With the advent of WWW and easy accessibility to the internet has led to new
challenges for the web designers and developers to create a good website that attracts traffic,
allows the users to browse through the information with ease and contribute significantly to
the benefits of the organizations. Designers these days are facing number of challenges in
creating websites that are up to the mark and have high level of user acceptability. The most
competent web designers would aim not just at providing the services but also lay emphasis
on the performance and functionality aspect of the website. As the websites have grown as
one of the important interface for any businesses, it has become increasingly important for
the website development houses to lay special emphasis on each of the challenges while
creating a website [1.42][1.43]. Usability appears to be an obvious challenge in websites
design [1.44]. Accessibility has always been an important part of web design. It is estimated
that around 10-20% of the population in most countries has some type of disability. If
26
accessibility is not a priority, your site may be unusable for a large part of your audience. The
website designer has a responsibility of providing effective navigation so that the user does
not get lost or confused. So it can be assumed that good navigation is a key requirement of
successful web design [1.44]. The number of hyperlinks on a webpage determines total
navigation facility from a site. Search engine such as Google make a citation analysis to rank
websites [1.45]. Links are so ubiquitous that we often overlook them in our designs [1.46].
Browser compatibility is one of the most challenging design issues and needs special efforts
for testing [1.47]. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) frequently updates its
recommendations on browser compatibility. Websites speed has become one of the
challenging issues for the designers and it has become one of the important factors for the
overall performance of the websites. Most potential customers do not want to wait for a
longer period of time for loading a page. One of the research findings mention that website
which has slow download time are less attractive when compared to the one with faster
download time [1.45]. Security is also one of the most important challenges that must be
resolved first to ensure success of online web environment. The loss of trust in online
exchange of information is continuously enhanced by different stories of hackers attacking e-
commerce sites and consumer data privacy abuse [1.48]. Use of different colours is also one
of the major challenges in website design. Eight percent of men are affected by colour vision
impairment and have difficulties in distinguishing between different colors [1.49]. There are
many types and degrees of colour blindness. The most common category of colour blindness
is called red-green colour blindness such as Protanopia, Protanomaly, Deuteranopia and
Deuteranomaly [1.50]. In addition, colour has a large impact on other areas of website design
like mood, colour symbolism, readability, legibility, consistency and accessibility [1.51]. In
the view of the diverse nature of human being, an identical website design is not possible
to facilitate the demand of human diversity. Human diversity is also considered as one of the
important challenge in website design. Culture also influences web design to a greater extent
in international commercial websites [1.53]. The web design for international e-commerce
sites is becoming an increasingly important issue. It is very crucial for the designer to meet
all the requirements of the dynamic users and follow the guidelines for delivering different
web interfaces. Awareness about guidelines, its interpretation and efficacy is highly required
in website design and it is also one of the challenges which need special care and attention
[1.54]. It is very difficult to develop the web based system for today’s world where the
designers can accommodate the need of the dynamic categories of the users. In order to fulfil
27
that, the web interface designers have to face lot of challenges which need to be investigated
thoroughly and then implemented to overcome all the short comings. Various new challenges
for designing web based information systems are also there like technologies etc [1.55].
During the development of different kinds of the web based systems the user is one of the
most important assets which needs to be explored to a greater extent to have a better designed
websites or web based systems. A user centric design helps the designer to a greater extent in
achieving his goal of making website a success. The various aspects in web development or
web based systems conclude by making recommendations that the development of Web
based information systems is characterized by the importance of user involvement [1.56].

1.17 GOVERNMENT GUIDELINES IN WEBSITE DESIGN

It has been realized that electronic governance is an important goal for the government of
different countries all over the world. The government of India has also laid emphasis on
delivery of online government services to its citizens. Websites and portals have the ability to
integrate infrastructure and applications and emerged as the logical front end for government
initiatives to deliver a wide variety of information and services to its citizens. A large number
of government websites have been designed by different organizations across the world in the
past few years. As of today, there are over 5000 Government websites in India. However,
these websites follow different technological standards, navigation architecture, design
layouts, different look and feel as well as functionality. This dynamic architecture creates lot
of inconvenience for common citizen to familiarize with the functionality of each individual
website. The need for standardization and uniformity in websites belonging to different
categories can be stressed upon to make their behaviour similar in all respect. Like other
countries in the world India has also established accessibility standards/guidelines for
designing websites. Compliance with these guidelines shall ensure a basic minimum
standard, consistency and uniformity to the websites. Hence all possible efforts should be
made to comply with these guidelines. These guidelines address common policy issues and
practical challenges during development and management of their websites. The guidelines
have been framed with an objective to make the Indian websites conform to the essential pre-
requisites of UUU trilogy i.e. Usable, User-Centric and Universally Accessible. Among other
major areas for which guidelines have been put forward in this document is website design. It
is a phased approach adopted to bring out a set of recommended guidelines and policies
28
based on common knowledge and accepted National and International norms. These
guidelines could eventually form the basis for establishment of the desired standards [1.57].
Design in its broad sense is the process of enhancing the representation of content to the user
in a way that is understandable, navigable and visually appealing. The various checkpoints
provided by the document under different names that belong to the design field are Colour,
Visual Identity, Page Layout, Typography, Images, Audio/Video/Animation, Navigation,
Site Search and Sitemap [20].

1.18 WEBSITE DESIGN EVALUATION

Why do we evaluate websites is a very big and important question around which the whole
process of our research revolve. Websites needs to be evaluated for its accessibility,
coverage, objectivity, accuracy, reliability and many other parameters related to its design. As
we have earlier discussed about the importance of websites in this current era of information
technology and its future dependency by all the organizations existing in this universe.
Websites one or the other way has become the gateway of different organization through
which we can enter inside an organization and get all our work done without giving a single
physical appearance. By taking all these aspects of the websites or any web based system into
account, it has become mandatory for an organization to float their websites by having a
perfect design which caters to the need of all the dynamic categories of the users. In order to
have beautiful designed websites by an organization, lot of research and development needs
to be done to study various aspects of the websites design, its target users and the various
services provided by the organization through websites. To full fill that goal the websites
needs to be thoroughly evaluated by taking into account the various methodologies available
like automated tools used for online analysis, physical assessment, interaction with the user
and the designer perspective regarding website design. In order to improve the design the
websites needs to be regularly evaluated which make them to adapt to the current user
requirements. In our research we have implemented various methodologies for evaluating
websites like feedback through questionnaires from users and designers, online analysis
through automated tool and self assessment by the researcher. The evaluation of website
design is of utmost importance because it influences the website performance in number of
ways. The parameters which influence the website design and identified by the author after
intense literature review in this chapter are browser compatibility, colour combination,
29
website page loading speed, web page size, technology, sitemap, feedback, security,
hyperlinks, cultural manifestation, gender, language, content, accessibility, global presence,
human computer interface, attractiveness, visual style, mood, objective, graphics elements,
fonts, convey information, page layout, text, paragraph formatting, images, lists, icons,
navigation, updated information etc. All the above given factors influence the website
developer to a greater extent during its design phase.

Evaluation is a systematic determination of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using

criteria governed by a set of standards. It also deals with the structured interpretation, results,
original objective, predictions and achievements. So evaluation is done with the intention of
improving the value or effectiveness of the websites. The common questions during website
evaluation are Accessibility, Navigation, Design, Content, Security, Legal Stuff, Re-
Assurance, Legitimization, Technical and other marketing Considerations [1.58].

1.19 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

While the literature review conducted in the second chapter will show the existence of
numerous guideline sets, the studies in this dissertation are predominantly focused on the
research based web design and usability guidelines recommended by W3C standards. This
guideline set offers the largest collection of guidelines, each with a clear indication of
relevant research evidence. The design guidelines of the W3C standards was chosen because
it look after and managed by the founder of world wide web Tim Berners-Lee and the
organization is responsible for updating latest design guidelines as per the latest user
requirements. W3C is a web standards organization founded in 1994 which develops
interoperable technologies, specifications, guidelines, softwares, and tools to lead the web to
its full potential. W3C look after every important aspect of websites design guidelines but our
study is limited to only nine parameters but very important in nature, which influences the
user’s behaviour to a greater extent. The nine parameters undertaken for the study includes
Browser Compatibility, Colour Combination, Page Loading Speed, Page Size, Hyperlink,
Feedback, Sitemap, Technology and Security. Moreover the different parameters identified
by the authors, on whom the study was done also verified by the common users through
offline questionnaires and designers through online questionnaires. The common users and
designer’s questionnaires are also analyzed for their opinion about the current status of five

30
different categories of the websites on the basis of nine website design issues undertaken for
the study. The data obtained from common users and designers are also tested in order to find
out the various relations existing in website current design status and adherence to the design
guidelines by the designers respectively by the use of SPSS. On later stage the automated
methodology is also proposed which help the designers / webmasters in testing website
during its design phase on the basis of above given nine parameters. As a result the model is
proposed for design and development of websites in which it is recommended that all the
nine identified parameters must me included and shall be given more focus during the design
phase of the websites and automated methodology is also embedded for testing website code
according to the design guidelines recommended by W3C.

31