Top Ten Tips for Web Site Design
Alec is a regular member of our live community. Recently, he sent me his top 10 list of tips to help you with good Web Design. Even though I wasn’t able to do a video on this email, I wanted to pass them along to all of you.
- Why? Why do you need a site? What do you need to do? Get more leads? Sales? Votes? Look cool? Will search engines be important? If you can’t answer, better wait until you have a strategic plan for your company overall.
- Audience. Before anything else, you have to figure out who you’re creating your site for. What are the 1-4 questions they’ll have in their heads that, if answered, will mean they’re going to call, buy, or take whatever action they need to?
- Architecture. Create the site map. The map shows how your site will be structured. It could be fancy and complex, or simple. It could be drawn on a napkin, even. Just so long as it provides a rational structure for your presence.
- Wireframe. Then show where stuff will go on each page. Think of this as a site map, but for each page (a page map?).
- Design. Create the pretty stuff. This is what most folks call ‘Web site design’. Notice that it’s step 4? A lot of thinking goes into this, making sure that the way the site looks fits the site’s role.
- Mockup. Take the design and turn it into a set of Web page templates that you can view in your Web browser. The mockup is the model for the site. It shows how drop downs will work, and how processes like checkout or information requests will look.
- Test the Mockup. Then test the mockup. Is it standards-compliant? Does it look good in all major browsers? Does it present the most search-friendly and accessible information structure to the Internet? This is the chance to test before you build the site.
- Add the Tools. If you’re using a content management system (CMS), then the developers go to work, adding the mockup templates to the system. If you’re collecting leads, they’ll build the database and code to handle that, too. Finally, they’ll make sure you’re equipped for analytics.
- Add the Content. Type in the content, lay out each page, and check for spelling errors, etc.. If search engine optimization matters, tweak the content for best keyword richness.
- Test, Test, and more Test. Test the site for errors (broken links, crashes, and server errors) and bugs (sneaky things that aren’t immediately evident, like, say, your shopping cart not storing the ZIP code on orders).
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10 Comments
Useful Habits | Habits to make your technology GO!
February 26th, 2008
at 10:51am
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Karim
February 26th, 2008
at 1:54pm
Get Ready for Web 2.0 Strategies
Industry researchers and analysts Forrester Research have released a report predicting that businesses will increasingly turn to Web 2.0 tools such as RSS feeds, wikis, and social networking platforms to manage internal information.
Forrester expects that companies such as Google and Microsoft will acquire smaller Web 2.0 firms, while CRM solution providers like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM will embed Web 2.0 functions into new offerings.
This trend will tie into the move to deliver business services via Web platforms, or SaaS.
The use of RSS in enterprise firms will increase from 9 to 20 percent by the end of 2008, Forrester believes, and the use of social networking tools will grow along with it.
As these tools become more common and migrate downward, as technology always does, SMBs with information management issues should find more solutions coming available to them within a year or so.
Sources:
CRM Outsiders:
http://www.crmoutsiders.com/?p=112
Forrester Research: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,43882,00.html
elbone
February 26th, 2008
at 7:16pm
Thanks for the tips
they actually helped me out quite a bit, now my site is [i]sort[/i] of valid!
Nick R (MabusPwns)
February 26th, 2008
at 8:07pm
Good fonts too… fonts can destroy or make a site!
linuxpro
February 27th, 2008
at 2:09am
nice just what i needed i m starting a web page and this is what i needed to help me out
Web design page
February 28th, 2008
at 9:00pm
Original post:Website Design Top Ten Tips forby at Google Blog Search: web design page Technorati tag: Web design page
LeprechauN
February 29th, 2008
at 5:14pm
I’m a graphics designer and web developer, just want to share some knowledge on a couple of these tips!
“Testing” the mockup, very important and not the easiest thing to do - you’ll want to install common browsers and test in all as you go, even the smallest change could send 1 browser off into its own world
I’ve recently come across a handy tool for XP’ers, pretty sure this isn’t Vista compatible, but if you’ve already upgraded to IE7, this can install IE6 as a stand alone browser, I use it alot to test my mockups for clients, since I still need to make sure the site is viewable on IE6: http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
Also educate yourself as much as you can on XHTML and CSS, validate what you’ve coded and if it doesn’t validate, don’t shrug it off because it works anyway - find out why its giving you errors, you will learn alot in the process and build a better, more accessible website.
LeprechauN
February 29th, 2008
at 5:15pm
I forgot to add one of my favorite resources for design related stuff: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ you can learn alot, and find some very valuable resources from this site
majorLee
February 29th, 2008
at 8:36pm
One major thing to iterate is web standards I see a lot of sites that do not use it. It is important and will help you in the long run. If your looking to get in to web design I will say you need to be fluent in programing more company’s are pushing application style websites that will cattor better to the user. Itunes is a great example. These are some of the languages I know and will benefit a lot of web developers php, css, javascript, xml, and mysql. If you know these languages you’ll be good. Other languages that will be useful besides those that I know .net, perl, action script 3, ruby rails, ajax… the list goes on but the ones that I have posted are the main ones used.
When creating sites it is per tenant to be organized it helps you and other people on the project. I personally use Dream Weaver which is a great editing tool to debug and upload sites. Also in this industry its good to stay on top of the new technologies that can be implemented in a website, a good app to look at now is adobe air and flex, it goes with what I was talking about companies going more towards application style websites.
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May 31st, 2008
at 2:51am
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