The definition of web design has changed dramatically over the last decade; and if ever the old adage “change is good” could not be more true in the process of website design. The process of website design in the past was almost left entirely up to graphic designers, although arguably aesthetically pleasing the weighted graphic design, the lack of on-page text and the overall template design did the website owner no favors when trying to obtain a competitive placement in the search engines.

Today, the meaning of the term web design has been expanded to include the conceptualization, planning, wire-framing, graphic design and all of its media components as well as the final execution. The design process of today requires the heavy interaction with the planning and development teams including; SEO, IT Development, Affiliate and Web Marketing personnel and the Client as part of the process of ensuring the delivery of a product that is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also search engine friendly, customer friendly and ensures through the appropriate positioning of advertising or other media the highest possible conversion rate for the end client.

As web technologies have continued to evolve, browser compliance and standardisation has occurred leading to widespread acceptance of CSS, XHTML and XML amongst others. As the standardisation of these technologies continues and these technologies become more specialised, we have begun to see the segmenting of web design into web design and web development.

Some of the more basic aspects of the web design process are;

• Conceptualization
• Wire-Framing
• Planning
• Content
• Design
• Development
• SEO
• Marketing

The above requires departmental input from the outset and until the final objectives are met. So many corporations fail in their objectives because of the lack of planning and overall leadership, many project managers lack the necessary understanding and technical knowledge of all aspects of the web development process, furthermore the lack of leadership often leads to departments not working in unison, egos and competition left to run their course, result in a the failure to meet the projects overall objectives and wasted investment.