Web design terminology- is website jargon confusing you? This is the article you need
Written by W&P
Date: 12/11/2024
If you have been corresponding with your web designers about how you want your website to look, you may have come across many unfamiliar web design phrases.
It’s fair to say that some web developers talk in a language that they think everybody understands, but they may simply not.
But do not fear we have you covered.
So, before you get on the blower to your web design agency to discuss how you want your new website to look, have a quick read of this article, and you will be all the wiser on what a CMS is, what responsive web design is all about, and why dynamic content could improve your website.
At this web design agency, we know our stuff, but we don’t want to overwhelm the customer. So we explain everything using plain English and don’t talk in an overly technical way. That way, our clients in Cardiff get a website they’re very happy with, and we make obtaining a brilliant website for your business an absolute piece of cake.
Back-End Development
Back-end development
With a web design agency, you will have a back-end developer. A web developer has to design a website that looks great and also runs smoothly. It can only run smoothly if the code has been written well. A website developer has to think about many things when designing a website, such as the website’s performance in terms of making it lean and fast.
A website developer also has to think about security and testing, to make sure everything from the Contact Us form works through to the main buttons within the navigation bar,
CMS (Content Management System)
What is a content management system?
A CMS is simply a type of website which most businesses opt for, regardless of whether you run a sole trader business or you run a large company. Basically, CMS, allows somebody with no web design skills, or coding knowledge to log into an dashboard,
The dashboard has already been designed by a web developer and will contain most of the functionality that you need to make simple changes to a page, such as adding a new member of staff.
Some content management systems are more straightforward to use than others. When a company director or someone from the marketing team calls us, they often insist on having a WordPress website.
In our humble opinion, WordPress has become the gold standard in terms of having a simple dashboard. So someone who hasn’t got a clue what PHP or Javascript means can just log in without any coding knowledge and start to edit the website.
Dynamic Content
More and more websites are using Dynamic content.
This is really just for the more expensive web design, such as designing a brochure or an e-commerce website. For example, let’s say you have an e-commerce website designed and want to become one of the largest retailers in the country for running trainers.
You might hear web developers, like web designers, code dynamic content into the website so that if a shopper returns, it remembers some of the items they last looked at.
That might have been a rather swanky pair of Hoku trainers, and they would appear at the top of the landing page or homepage, so the shopper would be presented with items they have seen before.
This is what is known as dynamic content. It can reduce the bounce rate, as shoppers can pick up where they left off and browse the same brand of trainers they were looking at before.
It also improves the U.X; for example, it shows that the business is going the extra mile to help the customer. So, for example, instead of having to wade through thousands of pairs of trainers, instead of the brand, the style of trainer they were looking at last comes on the homepage. This offers a level of personalisation, which can help the customer. They can start browsing more of that brand of trainer or jump straight into purchasing that item.
Geolocation
Many web design businesses will add Maxmind or Ipstack to their websites, which can help the company understand where the shoppers are.
This is done by reading the IP address, and then the correct company website will be displayed for that country. So, imagine you run a series of hotel chains across multiple countries and offer hotel breaks in many different currencies. This allows the website to know the shopper in the U.K. instantly; for example, it will change the currency setting to GBP.
What does website hosting mean?
So, for any website to be live and for shoppers to use it, it must be live and hosted. Now, some large companies do own their own hosting servers; however, the vast majority of businesses do not and pay another company to manage the hosting.
There are many different types of website hosting, and often, which option a company chooses will come down to its marketing budget. The cheapest option is shared website hosting, but there’s also managed website hosting, dedicated website hosting, and cloud hosting.
We would recommend that most of our clients opt for dedicated hosting.
What does indexing mean?
Indexing means that search engines like Bing, Google, and Yahoo can read the website and show your company website in the results. If your web designer has instead left the no-index tab on, this simply means that either just that page or sometimes the entire website cannot get indexed. So, when the no-index tab is left on, that page will never appear in Google’s results, for example.
It is so essential that the no index tab is not left on.
Which keywords are you going to focus your business’s SEO efforts on?
So, when designing a brand-new website, often, the business will pay for an initial SEO package. Now, don’t get us wrong. Paying for an initial SEO package doesn’t mean that your business will rank automatically on page one of Google. It’s a long road to get any new website onto page one of Google. However, if the web design agency does a good job, they can basically set the foundations or the groundwork for the SEO to be further improved.
So, before they start creating and building the new website, use SEO tools, such as Moz Pro, Ahrefs, and SEM Rush, to understand which keywords you need to optimise the website for. This will give you a good idea of what pages need designing, and your web designers can improve the on-page SEO by adding titles, internal links, alt text, etc.
Again, doing this SEO well when designing the website doesn’t mean the website will jump onto page one of Google when it’s fully built.
However, as we mentioned earlier, it’s a bit like building a house and getting the foundations right from the start; this is the same with the initial SEO work.
Your website designers can add, say, all of the relevant content marketing and meta titles and meta descriptions, which can help to get your SEO off on the right footing.
Without this work, say, adding high-quality content marketing, page titles, anchor text, etc., SEO will take much, much longer to complete in terms of getting your website onto page one of Google. So, if your web designers do this work to a good standard, that is, they use white hat methods and follow the guidance set out in Google E-EAT, then this can help to improve your business’s local and organic SEO right from the start.
So, do enquire with your web design company about how much they will charge to do the initial SEO work. We can complete our initial SEO work for just 400 for a 7-page brochure website. For a larger website, for example, with more pages, this would cost more.
Mobile Design
It is crucial that your website design a mobile-ready version of the website. All this means is that the website should snap to a range of different screen sizes, so if the shopper is shopping on a smartphone, train, or a tablet while lounging on their sofa, the website should snap to any screen size.
It’s also important that the website works well on smartphones and tablets. If, for example, many shoppers find the website difficult to use, then the bounce rate will go up.
If the bounce rate is kept high for a sustained period, this will damage your business’s organic search engine optimisation.