301 Whenever you are entering the world of having a website designed, one of the things that you will notice is that there are often terms that are being used that perhaps just do not make much sense to you. Now, we admit that some are more complex to understand than others but getting to grips with the terminology does make it easier for you to understand the process of developing your website. So, keeping that in mind, we thought that we would pull together 10 different terms that you might want to know about.
1. 301 redirect.
This sounds confusing, but what it refers to is the person hitting your website being referred from an old page to a new and update page. For example, a 301 redirect would be used if the ‘About Us’ page was now at domainname.com/ourcompany. Most times, you are not even going to be aware of this going on but it makes a website far more professional with the visitor being sent to the correct place so they are still able to get the information that they are looking for.
2. 404.
This is a code that is shown when an individual lands on a page that does not exist. This happens when they type in the wrong URL or the page was perhaps deleted by you. A 404 page will often have an explanation as to what has gone wrong.
3. Call to Action.
This is also referred to as CTA and it refers to a button or banner, text or image that urges the individual visiting your website to take action in some way. This could be used to get an individual to move to another web page or email or perhaps even to purchase something on an e-commerce website.
4. Content Management System.
This is shortened to CMS and is a system that allows you to control the content on your website in an easy to follow manner. Programs such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are prime examples.
5. CSS.
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and is used by developers to control how your website looks. It sets up colors, images, and text styles amongst other things and creates a sense of uniformity throughout your website.
6. Favicon.
The favicon is the small image that sits in the browser bar as well as bookmarks and is linked to the website. It is often their logo or something that makes it easy to identify the site.
7. Responsive Design.
Responsive design is something that is extremely important for websites as it is a type of design that changes according to the type of screen that the site is being viewed on. For this, everything in the design has to be fluid so that the website is still easy to navigate no matter if it is being viewed on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
8. Slider.
Sometimes in the design of a website you may hear the term ‘slider’ being used. What this refers to is a series of images that are usually in the form of a banner and appearing on the homepage that rotate on a constant basis. Often, you will see this towards the top of the page.
9. User Experience.
User experience is important simply because it focuses on the way in which the visitor to the website is able to interact. Every single part of the design process right down to every single word that appears on a website is going to be linked to the idea of providing the best user experience possible. You need things to work smoothly, easy to navigate, easy to understand and to just make visiting your site a pleasure.
10. WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG stands for ‘What You See Is What You Get’ and it refers specifically to Content Management Systems whereby you are able to preview changes to your website from within the system and the user is able to see things in advance regarding text and graphics without them actually needing to have any specific knowledge of coding. This is often seen as being an easier way of editing and updating websites where you can effectively ‘check’ your work before it is made live.
Now, obviously there are a whole host of other terms that are used within the world of web design and it is important that you do fully understand everything before you get too involved in the production of your site. However, any web designer is going to be quite happy to explain the terminology in advance as there is an understanding that aspects of the industry are rather complex and difficult to follow especially for those with no prior experience.
Never be afraid to ask for an explanation because, after all, you are the client so you deserve to know what is going on at all times.
