The Design Process
Puzzled about the web site design process? What do you do, what does the designer do? If you're thinking about getting a web site built, what follows is an overview of what to expect.
What is the web site development process?
At it's top level it consists of these steps:
- You specify your goals and requirements to a web designer
- The designer designs a web site that satisfies your requirements and can help achieve your goals
- You sign off on the design
- The designer then develops the web site and populates it with the information you provide
- The site is launched and registered with search engines and directories
- You monitor the impact of the site on your business and measure its success based on criteria you had previously set out to the designer
If this is the process at a high level, how do you prepare for it so that you enter it with the right information and enough information to succeed?
Preparation
As with anything, good preparation is the key to a successful web site design or redesign. You need to take the following steps to ensure that success:
- Determine the business or personal goals of the web site
- Determine how you will measure the success of your web site, and over what timeframe
- Assemble existing information about your business, your products and your services
- Determine what's missing and if it needs to be added
- Group the documents by general subject area such as products, services, and client support.
- Take each group and break it down into sub-groups
- Assemble photographs, logos and other graphic elements that support your products or services
Next Steps:
- Look at competitor web sites
- List the web sites that you like
- Understand your expected audience
- Get more than one price quote
- Decide how maintenance will be handled - you or the designer?
- Decide how statistics will be gathered
- Get a cost commitment
What to expect during the Design Phase:
- Site Map
- Design Mockup
- Feedback
What to expect during the Development Phase:
- Frequent ongoing updates on the progress of developing your site
- Developer should implement the design agreed upon with no significant differences
- Design will be extensively tested and debugged
- The site will be registered with search engines and directories
- Cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility will be tested and confirmed