Planning an effective Web site design

Seventy one hundred years of a successful project is planning. This means that starting with measurable objectives. Your goals and objectives should always tie back to the mission of your company. So, if your mission is to lead the market in the widget, the purpose of the site should be to do it. It 'also important to set measurable targets. This proves that investing in your website, pay. In addition, you will look good to your boss.

Once goals are set, planning is still far from finished. We recommend reviewing your target audience or audiences and enter into my head. This means finding out who they are and why they are on your site. So, you need to make sure you are fulfilling their needs. Identify the actions that each target will be on site. If it is someone that purchase a widget, widgets make easily available from the homepage. Research shows that people who buy on the web wants to see the products now and they want to see pictures and prices. Put your widget in your home page with a small image, title, description, price (I hate users drill down to get the price), and a link "Buy Now".

The next step is to determine the specifications of your functionality. It looks scary, but it is not. Most of the developers can work with a list of statements such as "I want a user to be able to rate the products on a scale of one to five." Write down everything you want your site to do and also include what you might want to do. For example, "A director should be able to access an area of ​​content management and add a press release." You get the idea. Together with your specifications, you must include a discovery database. This means that to determine all possible fields for all that could be stored and served in a database. For example, a product may have an image, a title, description, price, a product number, etc.

Now that you know who your target audience is and have identified the locations of key users and you know what the site should do, it's time to start creating the information architecture. This determines the flow of the site. Construct the flow of the site to best accommodate the locations of key users. This should give the user what he or she is looking for in three clicks or less.

After determining the information architecture, it is time to create wireframes. Wireframes are like a draft of your website. We recommend that you identify all of the content that will be represented on every page including the navigation, logos, images and content. This is a very important step because it takes all the guess work for the designer, and you can do a gut check usability on your key user paths and flow of the site. You can also build a test site based on the wireframes and run a usability test.

The next step is to get your content together. Start with a strategy of content. What are you trying to accomplish with your content? Do not forget to include a search engine strategy that defines what your keywords are and how you will leverage your content. And 'all the content work towards your goals and objectives? Too often I see pictures insignificant, as the ubiquitous handshake. Web users are tired amd images like these only distract the user from their mission. Do it yourself and your users a favor and leave it out. Instead, use images that are significant and I'm not talking about the butterfly that means growth.

Only once all the above steps are taken you should also start thinking about design. Many web design companies with the design lead. Then the customer ends up with a site that can be beautiful, but does not support the aims and objectives. It 'also of utmost importance to design around the content rather than creating a design and then stuffing the contents into it. Your design should support your brand and serve as gift wrapping paper. Again, make sure that the project supports the paths of key users, the first application, the web designer should ask is: "What's the first thing you want people do when they come to your site do not forget to complement the look. feel of your site with your materials out of line - if you do not, you'll just end up diluting your brand and your marketing efforts.

The schedule is not finished yet. The last piece is to schedule the actual work - which is going to do what and when. Who must give approval for what when. Throw in some milestones, stakeholders, and results and that's it. In other words, create a project plan. And by all means, plan to launch the site. Making conscious, not an incomplete, rushed event because someone has in mind that this must be done just before the end of the year, or create some buzz and PR for the launch of new website beautiful and effective. Remember, you only get one chance to gain or lose users if a new user enters the site and see what their research, they are gone, forever, and you've just lost a potential customer for life.

From planning and do it well, instead of a hurry, you will have an end result that is not only effective, but also matches the expectations of all - your boss, your sales team, your marketing people and, above all, users and your bottom line .......