What is a Website?
First of all… it’s ‘Website.’ Why? Because I said so. Really people, it doesn’t matter how you spell it, and why so many of you get stuck on semantics is beyond my comprehension.
But I digress… a lot…
You may be fooled, quite understandably, into thinking that a website is specialized code called tags that are decorated with other code called styles. But, you would be wrong. A website is made with those HTML tags and CSS styles, maybe sprinkled with some funky Javascript, and/or processed by a back-end language like PHP or ASP, then thrown together in a boiling pot called a server. These things are all fine and dandy, and written about far more expertly elsewhere than I’ll get into here, but they are not what a website is.
Usability, and Accessibility too, while very important, are also not what a website is. They are simply qualitative measurements of the site. Well, ok, Accessibility can be a very quantitative measurement, especially in the eyes of the law, so do yourself a favor and read a little bit about it.
The User Interface itself isn’t even what the website is. The various parts - the navigation, header and content, in fact the entire website - are all subjects to the ultimate goal of the website. A website is a product built to serve a purpose. It is a tool, and nothing more.
We can understand this by looking at both the forest and the trees. The forest would be the overarching goal which the website serves. This is often to make money, though that may well be secondary to a more auspicious goal (and if it is, good for you!). On the other hand, the trees, the individual parts of the website, are each intended to fulfill a smaller purpose that feeds into the larger one.
Therefore, when I approach the design of a page on a website, the first question to ask is “What is the purpose of this page?” If there is no clear answer, then the page should be axed. This counts for any part of the page as well, be it an ad, or a button, or a paragraph of text. The answer to that question doesn’t have to be complicated though, in fact it’s best if it can be answered in a single sentence such as “the purpose of this page is to explain the history of my company,” which would perfectly suit an ‘About’ page. Purpose doesn’t have to be grand.
The second question to ask, if the first is answered successfully, is: “What do you want a person to do?” Preferably there should be one idiot-proof answer to that question because if there isn’t, a person will likely become confused, and quite possibly leave. And I sincerely doubt that making a person leave is your purpose. Generally, if any one page of your site is a dead end, then you’ve failed to achieve your goal. You must constantly guide your visitors towards your goal, otherwise, you’re not fully exploiting the potential of your website. Even the humble ‘About’ page can further guide a person to make a purchase, or contact you for more info. The exact purpose is subjective to your project, and some pages can have multiple actions, but each page of the website must have a purpose.
Therefore, to answer the question “What is a website?” We can see that a website is a tool purposefully built to guide people towards a goal.
So, what’s your goal?
