Planning A Web Site Design

The Denver website design company I work for, Fusionbox, almost always has clients who call with rush jobs. Sometimes we lose out on jobs because we insist on how the project can’t be done right in a certain timeline. What we have realized is that you could do it quickly, or you can undertake it right.

Seventy-five percent of your successful project is planning. That means beginning from measurable goals and objectives. Your goals and objectives would be wise to tie back into your company’s mission. So, if your company’s mission will be the market industry leader in widgets, your website’s purpose ought to be to make it happen. It’s also important to set measurable goals. This will prove that committing to your internet site, makes sense. Plus, it’ll make you appear good for a boss.

Once the goals are set, your planning remains not even close to done. You’ll want to examine your target market or audiences and obtain inside their heads. This means finding out who they really are and why these are on your site. Then, you will have to make sure you are fulfilling their needs. Identify what actions each target market will need on the spot. If it’s someone buying a widget, make widgets readily available from the homepage. Research reveals that people that buy on the web need to see products right away plus they are interested in images and prices. Put your widgets on your homepage using a small image, title, description, price (users hate to drill down to get pricing), along with a “Buy Now” link.

The alternative is always to determine the specifications of the functionality. It sounds scary, but it’s not. Most developers could work having a set of statements like, “I desire a user in order to rate products on the scale of 1 through five.” Write down all you want the web page to perform as well as include what you might want it to complete. For example, “An administrator can log in a content management area and put in a press release.” You get the idea. Along with your specs, you’ll need to will include a database discovery. This means determining every one of the possible fields for precisely what could possibly be stored and served in a database. For example, an item may have a graphic, a title, an account, an amount, an item number, etc

After you’ve got determined your information architecture, it is time to create wireframes. Wireframes are similar to a blueprint of your online site. You’ll want to identify all of the content which will be represented on each page including navigation, logos, images, and content. This is an extremely important step since it takes every one of the guess workout for the designer, and you will perform a usability gut check-in your key user paths as well as the flow of the site itself. You can even build a test site in line with the wireframes and run a usability test.

The next step would be to get your site content together. A start has a content strategy. What are you wanting to accomplish with your posts? Don’t forget to will include a search engine strategy that defines what your key phrases are and exactly how you will leverage them in your site content. Is all of one’s content working toward your goals and objectives? Too often I see meaningless stock images like the ubiquitous handshake. Web users are jaded and images like these just distract an individual using their mission. Do yourself along with your users the following favor by leaving against each other. Instead, use images that might be meaningful and I’m not speaking about the butterfly that signifies growth.

Only once all the above steps are taken should you even start to take into account design. So many web design companies lead with design. Then the client winds up which has a site that could be gorgeous but doesn’t support goals and objectives. It is also of the utmost importance to style around content in lieu of making a design after which stuffing this content in it. Your design should support your brand and be the wrapping paper towards the gift. And again, ensure the design supports those key user paths; the initial question your web designer should ask you is, “What’s the very first thing you need users to perform once they come to your site. Don’t forget to integrate the look and feel of one’s site with your offline materials– unless you, you’ll just end up diluting your brand along with your marketing efforts.

Your planning is still not done. The last bit would be to plan the particular work–who is going to complete what when. Who should give approval for what when? Throw in some milestones, stakeholders, and deliverables, and you are done. In other words, produce a project plan. And by all means, plan the launch of the site. Make it deliberate, not an incomplete, rushed event because someone has it inside their head that just has to be done before the end of the year, if not Create some buzz and PR to the launch of your new gorgeous and effective site. Remember, you merely have one possibility to gain or lose users; if your new user concerns your website and doesn’t see what they’re trying to find, they’re gone, forever, and you’ve just lost a potential new lifetime customer.

By planning, and doing it right instead of quickly, you will have an end result that’s not only effective but in addition matches everyone’s expectations– your manager, your sales team, your marketing people, and more importantly your users plus your net profit.