Exploring the vast waters of web page design creation

Written by Carlos Gomez

The creation of a website for a small to medium size company is of sum importance during the given current situation in which businesses lack fromcustomers due to the lack of demand for their services or products. Anything that is not essential passes to a second frame and is no longer important. Easily put into words, during crisis people tend to prioritize the survival products which seem to have a high chance of scarcity at some point. The crisis being the Novel Coronavirus. This will have a negative effect towards sales in general until the economy starts to reactivate itself showing improvement on a monthly basis. Given the circumstances and the opportunity the website for Expresion Textil Hogar was started as a personal project in which project hours would be counted as a personal project. The project is still ongoing by the minute and there is a peculiar way of working between both parties. This paper will explore the techniques used for creating a website and the approach to succeed on this deed.

Starting from scratch

What is a website, and why is it important to have?

Websites are nowadays the sought formality of companies desired by potential clients. Companies with websites expose themselves to the world in a fast, approachable and open way. A company without a website in the 21st century could translate to not so serious or non-existent because of the lack of engagement it creates in comparison to the ones that do have a website up and running. Potential clients look for websites mainly looking for something in specific from the target company, products, services, product development cooperation or just leisure. (1&1, 2019)There is a vast number of different programs or better known as content management system which can be used in the elaboration of websites, to name a few of the most famous ones: Squarespace, Wix, WordPress etc. The one chosen to realize the company’s webpage was WordPress because the firm already had paid for all the services including domain, editing software, emails and support from an agent in Puebla, Mexico.

WordPress

WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2, which means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free.(Kinsta, 2020)Wordpressis mainly used by a good number of people powering any kind of websites that total more than 30% of the entire internet. That is a lot of different websites. WordPress is an easy self-explanatory online or offline software that let the user edit and add web pages within their websites with the opportunity to use the already premade themes. The themes refer to the style of such websites and the order of the information, when and where does the information appear as well as font, color, background, pictures, videos, publicity between others. Within WordPress a vast set of plugins (apps that makes the life of the creator easier) can be downloaded in order to either have a better editing experience and other options of themes such as Elementor or Divi, or even different help with making the website picture loading time faster, improving the end user experience. All of the plugins might have a cost if the premium features are needed. Website creation with a team approachPutting into practice the learnings taken from university and Proakatemia, the unified decision on going forward with the project took an approach in which 5 people would take place, mixing the knowledge of ETH workforce, in a journey where these individuals would find the way on working together towards a common goal: Representation on the internet. The team consist of 2 Graphic designers, 1 student, the Operation Director and CEO acting as clients. The student took the role of Project manager since the interest awoken for the creation of websites since a training session took place. The investigation and the trial and error-based framework are being implemented. The time zones difference, the lack of team sense and the lack of compromise affect directly to the completion of the website. Progress has been made regarding team building, and the framework implemented with the recognised tool Trello.

Conclusion The creation of a website is imperative to have a presence in an already full competitors’ battlefield. The websites created nowadays need to be different in order to excel. The results obtained with the trial and error method had been a good learning for all the individuals involved in the project. New problematics have risen and not necessarily regarding the creation of a webpage, within projects it is important to identify the noise problems and strive for the completion of the main given goal. In order to achieve this communication is key. Time zones play a huge role, it is highly recommended to follow or implement the use of Calendar or such kind of app, understanding that the curve of learning is large and goes hand and hand with the time spent practicing the skill of designing a functional webpage that meets the required standards to be useful.

Bibliography1&1. (2019, August 6).

Digital Guide Ionos. Retrieved from What exactly is a website?: https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/websites/website-creation/what-exactly-is-a-website/

Kinsta. (2020, 5 12). Kinsta . Retrieved from Premium Managed WordPress Hosting: https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/what-is-wordpress/