Designing a website

Key Stages of a Web Pro­ject: 3
“The Design Stage”

With all our inform­a­tion gathered up
dur­ing the “Get­ting to Know You” stage,
whipped into shape and organ­ised within the
“Per­fect Plan­ning” stage, now it’s time to start
design­ing a web­site with a great look and feel.

Good design is good busi­ness, and a design isn’t fin­ished until
some­body is using it.

Why Design Matters

Design is such an import­ant factor for your web­site. Per­ceived Qual­ity plays a key role; if your website’s design isn’t deemed to ‘fit the bill’ by it’s vis­it­ors then your busi­ness or organisation’s suit­ab­il­ity will in turn be ques­tioned. Your busi­ness and how it looks online are inex­tric­ably linked. It’s really easy for a vis­itor to hit the ‘back’ but­ton and return to their search res­ults — often without even both­er­ing to read any of your content.

Vis­it­ors only want to deal with a busi­ness or organ­isa­tion that they feel they can trust. For example, we can’t expect a vis­itor to engage with an e-Commerce web­site and enter their credit card details if the website’s ‘look and feel’ doesn’t give off the neces­sary con­fid­ence pro­fes­sion­al­ism and trust.

Design Meet­ing

Because The Design Stage is so import­ant, Twenty­four­ten will arrange a ded­ic­ated ‘Design Meet­ing’ to dis­cuss the sub­ject with our cli­ent. As with the “Get­ting to Know You” stage, whether there is a ’round the table’ meet­ing or tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion or email dia­logue, it’s whatever suits you best and is most con­veni­ent, Twenty­four­ten are in their now famil­iar “Inform­a­tion Gath­er­ing” mode and are look­ing for the answers to some import­ant questions!

The Basic Design Questionnaire

When estab­lish­ing the appro­pri­ate ‘look and feel’ that your web­site will take — here’s some of the ques­tions that we often ask:

• Brand­ing
  Does your company/organisation have an exist­ing brand in place?
  Should your web­site tie-in to the style of exist­ing pro­mo­tional materials/campaigns?
• Ethos/Message
  Do you use a slo­gan or strap­line to sum up your company/message?
  What reac­tion do you want your audi­ence to have when vis­it­ing your website?
• Influ­ence
  What web­sites do you par­tic­u­larly like? (Please give URL’s and reas­ons).
  Are there ele­ments of other web­sites that you could see work­ing well for your site?
• Audi­ence
  Do you know the demo­graph­ics (Age, sex etc.) of your audience?
• Imagery
  Do you have spe­cific images that you want to incor­por­ate into the design of the web­site? Do you need Stock Pho­to­graphy to com­pli­ment your website?
• Goals
  What one thing above all oth­ers do you want your vis­it­ors to do?
  E.g. Make con­tact? Join a mail­ing list / data cap­ture? Make a purchase?

Mockups

Before we build any HTML or start put­ting together any pages of your web­site, we will first show you mockups of a homepage and a sub­page. These lay­outs and designs are based on the inform­a­tion gathered dur­ing the Design Meeting.

Often these mockups are OK’d by a cli­ent first time, or some­times there may be some fine tun­ing and amended ver­sions are resup­plied before a design sign-off has been agreed.

The Next Key Stage

With the Design Stage signed off the Devel­op­ment Stage will fol­low. Let’s move on to that next Key Stage …

Key Stages of a Web Pro­ject 4: The Devel­op­ment Stage