We need to understand more about your business to plan a
truly effective website. Is your business split into logical groupings or
chunks? This might reflect how a customer might perceive your company.
These grouping may not always agree with the structure of
the business. Put all ideas about business structure on the table.
- what are the functions of your business/organisation?
- how are sales generated?
- what are the profit centres?
- what are the marketing plans?
- look at existing brochures
- look at areas of product/services growth
- rank products/services by profit margin
- organisations need to look at their key objectives
- organisations should prioritise the services they provide
- why is a website necessary?
- what is the stated purpose and what are the goals?
- try and refine the above into succinct sentences or phrases
- how does a customer perceive the business/organisation?
- what information might they require?
- what might they want to do?
Once we have collated the following information:
- how the business/organisation operates
- the purposes/goals of the website
- how the clients/customers view the business/organisation
- what information and functionality the website needs
to offer the client/customer
Now we start the organisation of the website.
- layout the structure of the website in diagram form
- start with the 'home' page and work down through all
the subordinate sections
- the diagram, looking like an inverted tree or pyramid
will have both horizontal and vertical page layouts.
Some other points:
- it is important to design the website as a client/customer
sees the business/organisation.
- create pages and links to encourage the user to follow
the ideal course of action - enquiry, purchase, further reading, download
etc.
- eliminate as much as possible the need for the customer
to drill down through several pages to arrive at the desired information.
- you have a short period (less than 8 seconds?) in which
to convince a visitor to delve deeper into your website. Therefore the home
page is crucial.
- what emotions would you like to evoke in the site visitor?
For example, quality, fun, professionalism, trust or friendship.
- the look and feel of the website needs to convey the
brand and whatever emotion the brand should evoke.
- what colours, images and words will create the emotion
(Step 5) and support the brand?
N.B. these are not always the 'corporate' colours.
- return to the website diagram and annotate the webpages
with the above information.
- briefly describe the contents of each page in terms of
images, text and links.
- create a website plan that describes the website's menu
structure, pages, page content, database design and other important information.
At this stage "sign off" the initial website brief!!
Now we are ready to develop the website.....
