First and foremost, there is the need to define the term website design. It is a type of graphic design that aims to develop or style objects within the Internet environment so as to make the media more appealing to consumers by enhancing features and aesthetics. This way of defining web design differentiates it from web programming as the former focuses more on consumer-centered features. Furthermore, website design involves the creation of content-based media [usually hypertext or hypermedia] for a so-called end user such as the World Wide Web via web browsers, micro blogs such as Twitter and RSS readers.

Designing web pages involves a lot of steps and concepts. Among other things, certain disciplines are essential to web design such as animation, authoring, graphic-design, human-computer interaction, information architecture, corporate identity, search engine optimization, marketing, photography, etc. These things are necessary whether the website be static or dynamic. A significant building block of any website is its layout. Layout involves the dimensions of content and how media is delivered in a stream. For the consumer or computer user, layout simply means the visual content they see once in a certain website. There are several ways to measure content layout, the most popular being pixel, em and percent.

In the context of web design, the issue of form vs function is an important guideline. Some web designers may decide to focus on the aesthetics of a web site and neglect functions such as copyright, search engine optimization, navigation, ease of use, readability of text, etc. A website may look great with beautiful graphics and moving images, but it may not be good at generating sales and leads because of too many things on the screen. With that said, a good web designer should be able to design something that aim to achieve both form and function to provide the best possible result for its owner.