Web design is a broad term used to encompass the way that content (usually hypertext or hypermedia) that are delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, using a Web browser or other Web-enabled software is displayed. The intent of web design is to create a website—a collection of online content including documents and applications that reside on a Web server/servers. The website may include text, images, sounds and other content, and may be interactive.

Such elements as text, bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs) and forms can be placed on the page using HTML/XHTML/XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) requires plug-ins such as Adobe Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web page by using HTML/XHTML tags. Improvements in browsers' compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance and usage of XHTML/XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements and objects.

Purposing Web design is a complex, but essential ongoing activity. Before creating and uploading a website, it is important to take the time to plan exactly what is needed in the website. Thoroughly considering the audience or target market, as well as defining the purpose and deciding what content will be developed, are extremely important.

Web design is similar (in a very simplistic way) to traditional print publishing. Every website is an information display container, just as a book; and every Web page is like the page in a book. However, web design uses a framework based on digital code and display technology to construct and maintain an environment to distribute information in multiple formats. Taken to its fullest potential, web design is undoubtedly the most sophisticated and increasingly complex method to support communication in today's world..