Before you start to design a website you need to do some checking and planning so that your site will meet both your needs and the needs of your visitors. I've known several people who put together a website, and within a month or two had to do major redesigns and rewriting of the copy. They wound up spending twice as much time as was necessary just because they didn't preplan. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of time.
First, you need to decide who your target market is. Will your site be geared toward kids, adults, business executives or some other group? It's essential that you know this so you can design a site that will not only meet the specific needs of that groups, but will look right for them. You wouldn't show secretaries and business meetings on a kid's site any more than you'd show clowns and cartoons on a business site. A site must have the proper look to make your visitors feel welcome. Kids want to have fun, be entertained and have the needs of their high-energy lifestyle met. Business executives will want a site that looks professional, knowledgeable and be a source of information that will help them advance in their company. So knowing the needs and expectations of your clients will let you create a site with the proper layout, graphics, features and services.
by JEFF COLBURN
I'm in the process of redesigning the website design portion of my site for this same reason. I'm going after clients in a very specific market sector, so I'm creating new graphics, website templates and changing the copy on my site to be more focused on this group. The whole process may take a couple of months, but it will be worth it.
You also need to consider how your visitors access the Internet. Are they using high-speed or dial-up connections? This will let you know how graphic intensive your site can be.
I've read a variety of surveys on this topic, and no one puts the number of high-speed users in the United States above 52%. I know people who live in housing tracks of multi-million dollar homes who can get only dial-up because the high-speed companies don't provide service in their area. So don't assume that because your clients have money that they have high-speed connections. If they are located in major cities, they may well have high-speed, but if they're in smaller towns or in the suburbs, they may only be able to get the slower dial-up service.
Try and find out how experienced your clients are with computers and the Internet. The more experienced they are the more complex your site can be. However, I always recommend that a site be designed for the lower end of your user group. So I feel a site should be easy to use and load quickly for people who have dial-up connections and minimal computer experience. By minimal computer experience, I mean don't create a site that requires people to locate and install the latest version of some software program, or make them hunt down a codex.
Next you need to decide what you want the site to do for you. Do you want to sell things on your site, have potential clients call you, sell a subscription to a service you offer? Whatever it is you want the site to do, have a very clear picture in your mind as everything you do will be focused on this. You can take a tip from scriptwriters. Every script must be able to be expressed in a Log Line, a one-sentence description that explains the entire script. If you can't do this with your site, then you don't have a clear enough picture of what you want from your site. When you write out your Log Line don't cheat by making a sentence that's a page long. Just one, short sentence.
Another thing to consider is if you will be offering a service to your visitors that is time consuming for you. If this is the case you should try to find a way to automate it to make things easier for you.
On my site, I have forms that people fill out to send me information about their upcoming events. I have these forms set up so the information is in the sequence I want, and a format that makes it easy for me to add them to my site. For more complex items, you may want to have information go directly to a database. The only problem with using a database is that they must be done just right in order to work properly. If you have this outsourced, it could easily add $10,000 to $20,000 to the cost of your website creation, even for the simplest database.
If you have articles on your site that you want people to use, set up an autoresponder for each article. Then, if someone wants the article they click on a link and the article is automatically sent to them. This saves you the time and hassle of sending out the articles one at a time whenever someone wants one.
Now that you have all of this information, break out the paper and pencil. What you need to do is design the layout of your site. Some website design programs, like Adobe GoLive, let you design the layout on your computer, but I prefer to do at least the first draft on paper. As you decide where each page will go, and what other pages it will be connected to, remember all the information about your users. Be sure everything is easy to find, and don't make them drill too deep into your site to find things. I strongly recommend that you design your site so that any page can be reached with no more than three clicks. Making a user do more work than this will result in a lot of lost clients. Always make everything as easy as possible for the user, even at your own expense.
I know that doing all of this preplanning is tedious, especially when you're itching to start designing your site, but it's worth it. I hate wasting my time by going back and redesigning a site and redoing links because I started putting together a site without having all the pertinent facts. In the long run, this information will let you create a better site that will meet your needs, and the needs of your clients. This makes everyone happy and when everyone's happy your website will be a success.
No comments:
Post a Comment