Web Site Design Process

Site Purpose

What is the purpose of your web site? It is an important early step in the development process to determine what the actual purpose of your web site is going to be.

First, determine if your site :

• is the site going to be a personal web site or a business web site
• Is going to offer products for sale which requires an ecommerce site
• Is your site going to be used for promotion of your business
• Do you want to provide tools and features for your visitors
• Do you want your site to be an effective marketing tool or simply provide business information

Once you have determined the purpose of your web site you can then move on to the planning of your web site.

Web Site Design Process

Web Site Planning

One of the most important aspects of the creation process is the planning of the web site. The more time and effort put forth in this area now will yield great results for you.

Planning of your site is going to involve you determining what information you need to put together for your site and any research you need to perform. In addition, at this point you need to determine if you are going to include pictures, video, or sound on your web site and then determine where that multimedia is going to come from.

You also need to obtain a domain name. I recommend Godaddy.com and purchase all my domain names through this web site, they offer great tools for finding domain names, they can provide email and web hosting as well for your web site.

At this time you need to also consider an adaquate web hosting service. As stated earlier you can utilize the location that you purchased the domain name but it is not required. At this stage you must look at the bandwidth usage limitations as they will be important particularly if you are going to offer mutimedia on your web site. Web hosting can range anywhere from a few dollars a month to 40+ per month depending on the requirements of your site.

Once you have determined the answers to the above questions you can move on to developing your site structure.

Web Site Design Process

Site Structure

Once your web site is well planned you need to develop the structure of your web site. What are going to be the main pages of your site.

At this point, you have a domain name, a web host, and you know where your information is going to come from, along with the purpose of your site. Now you need to develop a structure for your site. How are you going to present your information to your visitors on your web site? The most important aspect is making sure you are going to have a usable interface and present your content in a way that makes sense to your visitors while at the same time accomplishes your goals. Those goals may be for your visitors to make a purchase, complete a form, or simply pick up the phone and call you.

Without a good solid structure for your site your visitors will lose interest and move on to another site.

One you have your structure down let's move on to the navigation system you will use.

Web Site Design Process

Navigating Your Web Site

How are your web site visitors going to find their way around your web site? You have your site structure set up now you need to provide a navigational system that makes sense to your visitors and provide them a structured way to navigate your web site.

If you look at the sample Flash text below, you can see what happens when you rollover it, however, if your visitors do not have the Flash plugin installed then they won't see it.

Your navigation system should be contain good, relavent descriptions of the pages that the links will take your visitors to. In addition, the pages the navigation links go to needs to contain information that makes sense for the visitors. I would avoid using Flash Animation or Flash buttons as your primary navigation source unless you have additional navigational links that do not use Flash listed on your pages.

Now let's look at your web site goals.

Web Site Design Process

Goals

Defining the goals, both short and long term, for your new web site is an essential tool to measure the success of your new web site.

You need to realize that just putting your web site out on the internet is not going to automatically bring n visitors. With that in mind, make your goals realistic. You may want to set a short term goal to have 100 visitors to your site within the first 3 months, from there you need to develop a plan as to how you will make that happen. The longer term goals are important as well as they will keep you focused on your long term objectives.

Now, we finally get to move on to the actual design of your web site.

Web Site Design Process

The Design

So, now with all this planning done, it is time to get an idea as to the actual design of your web site. There are many tools you can use for developing the base design.

I recommend doing some research about color schemes and design layout concepts before getting started. You can find some good starting points by going to the resources page on this site. Take the time to look at some of your competitors web sites and the kind of layouts they have chosen along with color schemes, this is typically a good starting point to determine what you are competing with.

Once you have a basic design in mind you will need some tools if you are going to design the site on your own.

Web Site Design Process

Design it Yourself

If you are going to complete the web site by yourself then there are some good rules to follow and some available tools you can use.

Here are some good tools that can be used to help with your web site design.

If you find that you do not have the time, or cannot get the proper tools, or simply feel as though it would take too much effort to design the site yourself, then look to a professional.

Web Site Design Process

Professionals

If you are considering to hire a professional to design your web site then this section will provide you with some good questions to ask and some good research tools.

There are a wide array of web designers and developers and you really need to take the time to investigate the potential designers by reading testimonials and looking at their portfolio and their experience level. Once you have narrowed your search down to a few designers, contact them, tell them your requirements and request a proposal from each of them.