Planning a web design project comes in various forms not to mention no plan at all (not really recommended!) to working on the fly from a barebones blueprint to a structured plan that takes weeks to reach its start date.
How you approach the project depends on your resources though there should be a structured plan in place to avoid pitfalls before you even think about typing <HTML> on your first page and before deciding on a live date.
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To begin with, a website is about the content functionality, its relevancy to the target audience and graphics to support the content as visuals strike for more attention.
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The information architecture needs to be known – who is the interest group? What content will interest your audience? Is the content targeting a niche? From this you can build a flowchart that shows the initial plan for the navigation.
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The information architecture needs to be created in line with the business plan but also interaction design where the visitors are concerned. What should be immediately visible on the home page? How intricate are the content pages, do many levels of information need to be charted for various relevant interests?
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Your site branding. Do you have a logo designed? If not, you need to think about the message being conveyed and if the logo needs to be quite rigid or if an abstract approach will suffice. Many logos are simply text like Google’s logo; other may need to carry a stronger graphical metaphor. Your business branding and identity needs to be thoroughly known at this stage.
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Do the SEO at this stage not later! Researching the content should be a very detailed task. When deciding on the content, it’s time to consider the position of the content in the search engines. Your content needs to be found so include keywords used as search terms to find your type of product or service.
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A list needs to be created around popular key phrases for use in titles and Header tags as search engines pick crawl these tags. Use wordtracker at to find popular searches this past month for a keyword or phrase, and use the Google keyword tool at to dig down through niche keywords for phrases that can be used as titles and header tags in your content.
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Navigation and usability go hand in hand. Looking at similar sites like competitor sites will give a good overview on the kinds of navigation systems that work in your niche.
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Textual and tabbed menus seem to work very well. Easy accessibility to the pages from the menus is paramount to sites that need to retain visitors.
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What software are you using? Do you have an in-house team to do the work? Can you afford to outsource? The content could include a mixture of graphics, video, flash, RSS feeds, server-side PHP or ASP for databases to collect data like visitor info, and scripts like scrolling news text boxes. Do you and your team have the skills needed to cater for the various elements?
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The web design template is an extremely important part of the project. It needs to fit in with the interests of the visitor. The site theme may need to be a corporate one or an artistic site with lots of beautiful graphics.
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The site needs to be cross-browser compatible, so testing is needed to be carried out on the popular ones such as IE, Firefox and Opera.
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Decide on a template that suits the viewers, and approach it as if you are a visitor. Record your experience of the template once the menus and content are being added. Did you find the information easily? Did the menus confuse you at all?
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A good approach once some pages are up and on the way to a complete site is to create fictional visitors e.g. Harry is looking for X and at a price of around Y dollars. Knowing his interests, what would Harry do upon visiting the site?
Once you have gone live, begin to post your site in relevant blogs and ask for feedback. This is a good step towards promoting brand awareness and grabbing interest groups. Many aspects follow such as the growing functionality e.g. forms. The process becomes an on-going task though approaching it in a methodical way will help avoid confusion and lost traffic later.
