The secret of excellent user experience (UX) is the fine blend of website design and database. Database driven websites are gaining popularity rapidly and are replacing static websites from almost all spheres of life. This is high time you started thinking about shifting to a dynamic design that relies on databases completely, rather than burdening your visitors with the bulk of a static website. Dynamic website designs or databasedriven site designs improve the usability of a website and boost UX manifold. They improve a company’s online performance, they can contribute to customer satisfaction, and they can help in customer retention to a great degree. In short, all the KPIs you know about, dynamic website design can influence them positively!
How are dynamic websites different from static websites?
The new age websites do not hardcode content into HTML code sets of each page. They store the content in a database that delivers it directly to the webpage. This makes room for more agility, speed, and customizations on the website. Since the content is present in a central database, any change in the content reflects directly on the pages. You can see this in almost all forms on the latest websites.
A central data storage system enables better data management. A single change or update can reflect across multiple pages in multiple browsers. This is much faster and more efficient than the manual processes most static sites rely on.
Where should you apply dynamic website design?
While some developers believe that dynamic designs are suitable for almost all kinds of websites, experts believe that some aspects require dynamic designs more than others.
- Several recurring pieces of content – press releases, blog articles, and notifications.
- Address and contact lists.
- Price lists and shopping cart options.
- Product inventories on ecommerce sites.
You can, of course, make do with a static site, but when you have a bulk of information to display a database driver website design is the ideal choice. The recurrence of the same information in multiple places across the site is much easier to maintain with a dynamic database is driven site designs.
What do you need for a database driven website?
Just like any other design and development process, your dynamic web pages will need a few resources, dedicated skills, and some effort.
- PHP, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and ASP.NET are some of the most common technologies cum languages developers use to develop these dynamic design sites.
- Knowledge of basic SQL will help you in proper maintenance of the database.
- Knowing the basics of HTML, JavaScript and CSS will also help you out in the process of building a dynamic website.
As you can see, some resources needed to build a dynamic site overlap with resources you would need for building a static site. What the former needs are better database management and almost realtime revision of the changes for website updates. Working with a reliable and experienced DBA consultant makes the process a lot less complicated for beginners. Better management of the main website database certainly makes the process more rewarding for the admin as well as the user.
A Content Management System is the smarter way to a dynamic site
Did you know? The most popular Content Management System (CMS) platforms including WordPress, Joomla and Drupal can provide you with the option to access a central data storage space. The CMS platforms provide all users with an administration area, where you can log in with the correct credentials.
This administration area allows the user to upload media files, edit media files and remove them too. New posts, metadata and titles, you can edit everything from the admin dashboard of the CMS platform. The new content you upload or the changes you make directly go to the database. You can save these changes, and they will reflect on the frontend of the website with just one click.
Millions of users regularly choose the latest CMS platforms for creating their websites and blogs. There are several plug-ins and manual options to manage these databases as well. These are forms of dynamic website designs. However, without proper knowledge of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and JavaScript, you will find it a little challenging to create unique, functioning, dynamic sites with the like of WordPress, Drupal or Joomla.
Why are not more website developers opting for dynamic website designs?
It is true that cost is the major reason most webmasters stick to static website designs. Dynamic websites often cost more. A huge part of the expense comes from the fee of the DBAs and data experts, who work towards the maintenance of the central database. Your database might require MySQL, Oracle or any other database management system. This will contribute to a recurring cost on your monthly website maintenance. More importantly, each website needs its customized website database design. This will further shoot up the prices. So, unless you have a trustworthy team of DBAs (Database administrators) or remote DBAs helping you out with the hosting, storage and maintenance process, you should stick to one of the CMS platforms (like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.) for making the big move.
The takeaway message
It is indeed true that dynamic websites support easy scale-ups. They are less prone to manual errors since the updating process does not involve manual data entry. Dynamic websites are ideal for e-commerce sites and blogs that need to reflect realtime user inputbased changes. Dynamic website designs are not another phase. They are not an ephemeral trend. This design trend is quite permanent, and it is here to replace static websites for good.
