Inneroptics - Web Design

The Making of Inneroptics.com: Part 1

Welcome to the first Inneroptics article, it seemed fitting that the first articles we wrote would be about the company's very own website. This article will shed some light on the website creation process and our thinking behind this site.

As a web design company we thought it was pretty important to have a good website, unfortunately it's easier to decide that you need a website than it is to find the time to plan, design and implement one.

We usually have a few other websites that need our attention more urgently than our own, a lot of companies face a similar predicament, they know they need a website but there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to go and get one made. We understand because we face the same problems but instead of employing a third party to make our website we have to find time to do it ourselves. Still, we managed it and if you are one of those companies that need a website but haven’t yet found the time, you know where we are.

The second most neglected phase of website development behind testing is probably planning. This is something that all projects require but of which many receive little or not enough. We like to have a thorough plan in place because only then can time or costs be predicted with any accuracy. For a client planning is essential to ensure that all of the components that are required to feature in the website are documented.

This process starts simply, we wrote down what we wanted this website to provide. Most importantly it had to be more than a list of our clients or an online business card because we wanted to put across some of our personality and as much of our knowledge as possible. By doing this we also hoped we would send a message to our current and future clients about the importance of the contents of their website. A static website has its place, but if your aim is to encourage people to visit your site the best method to attract users is to provide them with interesting, regular and up to date information. With this in mind we chose to add a blog, a list of links to interesting items and articles.

Once we had decided on our areas of content: client list, our work, articles, blog etc, the next item to consider was the structure of the site. What would appear on each page and how would users access each area of content? The answers to these questions influence the basic template of the site. In Inneroptics's case a two column layout was chosen, main content down the middle and an extra column sitting to the right of the main column. Everyday users may start to get out of their depth here, but it is still possible to write down a simple tree structure of how pages should sit, as a parent or a child to another page.

So now we have a plan and a structure, on to the fun part, the design phase. This is another part of website creation that should be quite simple for a web designer but as often happens; the hardest design to make is your own. As a designer you are most critical of your own work, various designs have been made for Inneroptics in the past, but few have ever been implemented. To get around this problem we set ourselves a very tight schedule, too much procrastination would only lead to multiple redesigns and no decision. Over an eight hour period we came up with this design, unfortunately we still had some problems choosing colours, but eventually we settled on what you see before you.

We understand that this design does not necessarily appeal to everyone and this bothers us, so as a solution in the future a feature will be implemented that will allow users of the website to choose their own colour scheme and even layout. This can be done with the wonders of modern web design techniques. Hopefully everyone will find a design that pleases them and it gives us a chance to continue making myriad designs to our hearts content!