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How do we measure web design success? What reporting is available for websites?

If you own a shop, you're aware of trends - maybe Friday evening is always busy in a fish & chip shop, as is Saturday lunchtime. You know how much you took on any given day, and how many fish you got through, but beyond that, the details of your success elude you. How many people looked at the menu on the pavement then walked away? How many people came in your shop but didn't buy? And for what reason? Which were your busiest tables? Who tried to find a seat but couldn't and went to the chippy up the road? How long did it take people to finish their fish supper and leave?

With the web and the web-tools we have available now you can find out all of that! Who came to your site, where they live, what time they visited, how long they spent on your site, which links they clicked on, how many pages they looked at, whether or not they bought anything, if they watched your video or downloaded your guide, if they read your opening spiel on your homepage and decided that your site wasn't for them.

The same applies for your campaigns. You can get any number of metrics to determine whether or not your promotion was a success, which parts of it were well received and which bits you can improve in order to make your campaign a resounding success next time.

Content Management Systems - what are they, and what is the difference between that and a flat HTML site?

If you are looking for a simple brochure style website, with few or no updates anticipated and little functionality, then your requirements are very different from a business who is looking to constantly update their eCommerce site from which they are going to conduct most of their business.

The two main categories of website are HTML/Flat brochure style, and content managed. The primary differentiator is that the owner/web editor/web manager can't update the former without prior website design/development experience and training. They are intended to be updated byt a professional web designer or developer who has to delve into code to make updates. This has a time and cost implication every time an update needs to be made. A flat HTML website will however be the cheaper option as they require less time and effort to set up. On the downside, they have limited capability for functionality.

A website with a content management system (CMS) on the other havnd however, costs more to build, but that cost will be offset by the fact that they are designed with the intention that the webmaster/owner/content manager will be making the updates, and in that case they are able to do it as and when they like, as often as they like, without a cost involved. CMS websites are typically suited to larger websites, that will be updated more frequently that their HTML counterparts.

A CMS site is built using a content management system framework (Wordpress for example), and is connected, via a programming language to a data source, such as an SQL database, where the large majority of the content is stored. CMS websites make use of language more complicated that HTML such as php or ASP.NET to allow for greater functionality and interaction.

How have web technologies evolved with time?

The web is built on several technologies working together to produce the dynamic resource it has become. But what are these, and how did they come about?

The basic building block of the web is a markup language called HTML. This enables content to be presented to the user in a particular way using 'tags'. Without it the web simply couldn't function. HTML was introduced as an experimental technology in 1992, allowing web designers to build a page using text, images and a basic framework to share information to users browsing remotely from their computer.

Mosaic was the first browser to be released, and despite it being launched eons ago in web technology terms, it is still recognizable to a user of a web browser today. Opera and Internet Explorer soon followed, as did HTML2, an evolution of HTML. In a relatively short space of time HTML3 and HTML4 were introduced, and included significant input from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in order to ensure that competing interests from involved parties wouldn't compromise the technology.

HTML4 would become recognized as THE version of HTML for the next ten years because of this, the '4' was invariably dropped in favour of just 'HTML'.

Meanwhile, Javascript, Java and Flash were developed and launched to allow greater complexity in the design, animation, interactivity and functionality of websites. CSS was then introduced to separate the content of a webpage and its styling. Several other browsers followed, including Safari, Firefox and Chrome, and small updates were made in the guise of XML in the following 10 years but it wasn't until 2008 and the introduction of HTML5/CSS3 that HTML made a serious leap forward. HTML5 gave the designer and the user even more scope for dynamic, interactive client side content, running natively in the browser, Flash having been long since phased out due to its reliance on a third-party plugin.

Maddison Creative web design Newcastle were founded in 2009

Today, the main driver of technology change is the increasing number of devices that browsers use to access websites - mobile phones, tablets, touchscreen devices - all dictate how websites are built, replacing the once ubiquitous desktop browser.

Web development and web design - what's the difference?

To build a fully functional, beautifully designed website traditionally requires a web developer and a web designed working together, to cover off all aspects of the design and build. While it is true that a lot of developers are comfortable designing and a lot of designers are comfortable developing the two disciplines are distinctly different:

A web developer is primarily responsible for coding, server-side, in order to allow the website to function. This can include managing the server and the transfer of files and additionally some client-side scripting such as Javascript, but it is predominantly programming.

A web designed on the other hand is responsible for the aesthetics of the site, along with the user-journey and experience. This may also include client-side scripting such as Javascript and HTML, but it is traditionally about the design and layout of the page, imagery, colours, branding and user behaviour.

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, what are responsive websites and how is web design affected?

Two out of every three minutes spent online in the UK are users browsing on either a smartphone or a tablet. 13% of adults in the UK browse the internet exclusively using their smartphone, 2% more than browse exclusively on their desktop computer.

In the last two years tablet internet use grew by almost a third, and in the same two year period smartphone use grew by 78%, while desktop internet use has decreased.

The way people use smartphones to access the internet has revolutionized the way websites are built. Long gone are the days that companies were happy to have customers browse their full, desktop version of their site on their smartphone, causing users to zoom in and out of areas of the page that interested them, struggling to click on the tiny text links to navigate. If you're building a website for the modern internet user, the likelihood is that if they don't view your site exclusively on their mobile device, they'll at least check you out via their iPhone or Android phone before sitting down later at their computer to have a more in-depth look.

This is why most clients want a 'mobile-first' approach to their website, whereby you ensure that everything looks and behaves beautifully on a mobile device before considering a desktop version, and if something has to compromise, it certainly won't be the mobile site.

A 'responsive' website is one that adapts to the device it's being viewed on, whether that is a desktop computer, a mobile phone or a tablet. The content is then displayed in a way that is optimized for said device, improving user experience.

How do we measure the success of our website, and what web design tools are available for reporting?

If you own a restaurant you have some ways of monitoring how your businesses is performing; you can check your takings and orders, you can take a look at your bookings and you can monitor how much stock you're getting through, and you can anecdotally measure when the waiters and waitresses are busy, but beyond that there's nothing more specific you can drill down into to gauge how your business is performing and how to improve it. Wouldn't it be great if you could find out exactly how many people looked at your menu at the door and decided to move on to the next restaurant? How many people tried to book a table and who couldn't because you were busy, and at what time? Which were your most popular tables and why?

With a website and with the reporting tools we have available to us as webmasters/website owners and web deisngers and developers we now have all this insight available to us at the click of a mouse. You can find out who visited your site and where they are located, what time they navigate to your site, how long they spent there, where they came from and which page they left at. Which links they clicked on, whether or not the purchased anything and whether they engaged with any of your multimedia content - did they watch your video to the end or did the bail after 30 seconds?

This also applies to your online advertising/emails - you can interrogate any number of metrics to determine whether or not your campaign is a success, which bits of it worked, which didn't and where you should focus your energy on improving, to ensure that it is a success the next time you run it.

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