Website Design & Technology
The Optillion website was developed in-house and its style, design and use of technology is a reflection of Optillion's web development philosophy.
Planning Is Everything
A website development project requires detailed planning is it is to be successfully realised. Central to the process is identification of the website's purpose and target audience, which will inform decisions on the site's style, structure and the technology to be used. It is the planning process - exchanging ideas, weighing options, allocating responsibilities - that ensures that all the stakeholders in the project are working towards a common goal.
Understated Design
Optillion believes in a minimalist approach to the design aspects of a web development project. The design of a website should:
- Take account of the needs and sensibilities of the site's target audience
- Use graphics elements appropriate to the demographic of its target audience
- Complement a website's central message, not conflict with or obscure it
- Use unifying elements to reinforce the design throughout the site
- Impart trust in the website and, by association, its owners
Web Standards
The choice of technology used to code a website will depend on the functionality required from the website, giving consideration to the future development needs of the site. The Optillion website is coded in XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), the current coding standard which ensures forward compatibility. The design is realised making extensive of external Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which allow precise positioning and styling of elements without the use of tables. The site incorporates Active Server Pages (ASP) technology, used to include navigation and footer elements which are replicated across many pages and to allow for the future incorporation of dynamic content. The resulting code is clean, compact and validates against the appropriate W3C standards.
SEO Integration
The site was planned and developed with its future search engine optimisation needs taken into consideration at every stage. Site structure, folder and file naming conventions maximise keyword exposure, title tags and description and keyword meta tags have been composed individually for each page and content has been copywritten after researching and selecting appropriate target keywords and keyphrases. A well planned website, which incorporates SEO features during its development, is a firm foundation on which to build a successul search engine optimisation campaign.
