Since the concept of websites first came into being in the early 1990's, web designers have continually shaped and reshaped the way websites look. During the first few years, websites were entirely text-based, with scarcely any images and very little layout except perhaps for an occasional heading or paragraph.

1. The Growth of Today’s Website Designing Industry
Since the concept of websites first came into being in the early 1990's, web designers have
continually shaped and reshaped the way websites look. During the first few years, websites were
entirely text-based, with scarcely any images and very little layout except perhaps for an occasional
heading or paragraph. However, as the web design industry advanced, we began to see table-based
designs, Flash, and finally CSS-based designs. To those who may not know how this all started, a
gentleman by the name of Tim Berners-Lee published the first website in August 1991, but it was
nothing more than a simple, text-based page with a couple of links. A web page from 1992 had a
dozen or so links, and its objective was to simply let everyone know what the World Wide Web was
all about. All web pages looked almost alike, and they were all entirely text-based with a single-column
design and inline links.
During 1994, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed, and this consortium set HTML
as the standard for marking up web pages. This almost prevented any individual organization from
building a proprietary browser and programming language.
Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web design and development have been one of the most
rapidly growing industries in the world. In fact, during 1995 there were fewer than 1,000 web
development companies in the United States. A decade hence there were over 30,000 such
companies, just in the U.S. alone.
Web development is today a broad term and can range anywhere from developing the simplest static
single page containing plain text to the most complicated web-based internet applications, e-businesses,
social networking sites, etc. One of the foremost reasons influencing this growth of the
web design industry is the decline of costs for creating and managing a website.
Today’s Internet has become an effective tool for interaction, communication and even business
growth. Website development has ceased to be costly, and there are a large number of small web
developers who offer their services at very affordable rates. The growth of the web design industry
was fuelled by companies using the web as a business tool to sell their goods or services. The
emergence of electronic commerce (e-commerce) has contributed a spurt in the growth of the Web
design industry. E-commerce sites have dramatically altered the way people buy or sell goods,

2. making trading much easier and convenient than ever before.
Another classic example of transformation led by web development is blogs. Open source content
management systems (CMS) such as Joomla!, Drupal, XOOPS, and TYPO3, along with enterprise
content management systems such as Alfresco, have carried web development into totally new
spheres of interactive communication.
Social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter offer users a platform they can
communicate freely with one another, and this is also changing e-commerce through the number of
hits and online advertisements.
Advertising on the web is also developing into a multi-million dollar industry, as advertisements in
one form or another are invariably available on every page of a website.
Today, many web development companies have well-trained and skilled professionals who offer
excellent services and have earned exceptional reputations around the world. With competition
getting fiercer every the day, and with there being a proliferation of websites, effective SEO
practices are also becoming necessary. It is a fact that online businesses and their unique web
designs are the KEY to commanding a lot of attention and respect from today’s Internet visitors.