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Web Design - 10 Stages
Based on our experiences we recommend that you involve
a reasonably wide cross section of your own staff and possibly
some of your existing customers. This will ensure that an overall
balanced perspective is achieved. However, someone must have the
final say otherwise nothing happens!
Stage 1) Goals
This stage is about defining long and short term
goals for the web site that are realistic and measurable. A lot
of web sites we've seen have been developed as "me too" exercises,
emulating another site's look and feel, and completed without direction
or means of measuring success. It is no wonder so many organisations
are disillusioned with their website. Setting goals form the foundation
on which everything is built.
We can assist as a sounding board to establish realistic
and appropriate goals. We can advise on their feasibility and give
some examples of how businesses have harnessed the unique opportunities
of the internet and made it an integral part of their business,
rather than an afterthought.
At the end of this stage there will be a written and
agreed set of measurable goals for the website. We can explain how
you can make use of the information that can be gathered about the
visitors to your website and their experience. For instance, did
you know that you can get an idea of the things that visitors to
your pages are most interested in, without even asking them?
Stage 2) Audience Definition
Many websites do not take account of the fact that
the business they represent will have different customer sets
or sectors and that each type of vistor may have different interests
or needs.
Dell, the computer giant, has one of the most successful
UK websites, and illustrates this point well. Their site is divided
into sections relating to home users, small businesses, corporations
and public sector organisations. As a result of selecting one of
these options you are presented with content and options that are
appropriate for your needs. This avoids confusing home users with
talk of 'highly fault tolerant raid arrays' or boring corporate
clients with information on the latest games related hardware.
There are other advantages too - making use of this
approach can help to measure the number of visitors to the website
that fall within each specified market segment.
The result of this stage will be a list of the different
audiences profiles which your business serves, or confirmation that
there is a single audience profile.
Stage 3) Audience Experience
When your audience profile has been defined, the next
stage will be to define how to achieve your most wanted response
from each sector. This could be anything from buying a product to
picking up the phone and talking to you.
If the aim is to get the audience to buy online, then
it is important to get enough information to them to allow them
to buy with confidence - while this includes information about your
company it must be mostly about the item that is for sale. You need
to create an environment of trust with the website, while creating
a desire for what you have to offer.
If your product or service is not well suited to being
ordered online then you will want to talk to your customers over
the phone. In this case it is more important to give potential customers
a general feeling that they are going to be looked after if and
when they do contact you, either by email or by calling. You need
to make them feel confident about your company. Being able
to respond quickly to email is also important. In some industries
not responding with good answers to an email within two hours has
been shown to decrease the likelihood of doing business by 75%.
Stage 4) Competition Benchmark
Researching your competitor's web sites and benchmarking
them against your own pages or ideas provides a valuable insight
in to the relative strengths and weaknesses of both their business
and their site.
Key things to assess may include: -
What is their search engine placement? (Google,
Yahoo and
MSN are good
ones to try).
- Does it get listed when you type in their company name and location
in? Was it in the top 10-15 of entries returned?
- Does it get listed in the top 30 returns when you type in search
words associated with their products and services?
- Are they a regional company? Do they appear when you type in
products and services combined with their county or region of
operation?
- Are there relevant search words that produce a smaller list
of returns, that you want to target your website towards being
listed in?
- When the competitors web site appears in results, is the text
associated with the search engine listing encouraging enough to
make you want to visit the web site?
- Which search engines are your competitors listed in?
Do their websites clearly position the business and
the services on offer?
Do their websites clearly differentiate them from
their competition? If so, how?
Do they make it clear how to contact them and what
to expect if they do?
Are they capturing potential customer information
in return for an incentive? E.g. a subscription to a newsletter
or report.
Do the websites load and respond quickly on all occasions?
Is the news and information up to date?
Is the content useful and informative to their potential
customers?
Is it easy to navigate around the web site?
Does the website create the appropriate image for
their business?
Are there any aspects you particularly like about
their web site?
If the web site sells items over the Internet is it,
easy, secure, and intuitive to use?
Does it explain the level of customer service they
can expect and what to do if there is a complaint or problem?
Are they making the most of customer testimonials,
as well as recognised accreditations and awards?
As a deliverable part of your competition assessment
you should list the factors you have identified as important to
your potential customers visiting the website and rate your competition
on them. From this you will be able to identify how and where you
can differentiate yourselves, rather than create a "me too" web
site.
Stage 5) Content
Content is one of the most critical aspects of a website.
Content can comprise of text, illustrations, pictures and possibly
animation, video and sound depending on what your goals, objectives
and markets are.
During development website projects often get held
up through lack of content. This usually stems from not having followed
the previous stages and therefore being unclear about the nature
of the content required to create the audience experience.
To help get things going use the list of audience
experiences identified earlier and bullet point the content required
to achieve this experience.
The content needs to be targeted to achieved your
most wanted response from a visitor interested in your products
and services.
Do not attempt to structure the content at this stage,
only once you have the content areas identified and documented,
should you move on to the next stage.
We can introduce you to the services of specialist
copywriters with a wealth of experience in creating appropriate
content that creates the impact you require, resulting in the achievement
of your most wanted response.
Stage 6) Site Structure and Navigation
The preceding stages have primarily been about creativity
and innovation. It is important that this thinking has not been
constrained by any pre-existing ideas of structure or navigation.
This next stage should only be commenced once you are sure you have
identified all the content areas required.
The objective of this stage is to tie the pieces of
content together into logical groupings and sequences of information
that will achieve required audience experiences resulting in your
most wanted response.
If you have previously identified that your website
needs to address multiple audience profiles, use this stage to identify
what content each audience profiles needs to see. One way of achieving
this is to create navigation systems based around the different
audience profiles. I.e. get the customer to declare what profile
they are or are interested in (as an example, home user, public
sector, SME, Corporate) via the navigation system and use this mechanism
to ensure that only appropriate content is subsequently presented
to the visitor.
You may find there is overlap in terms of the content
each audience needs to see. A web site can easily address this need
using a well-structured navigation system. The ability to tailor
information to specific clients needs is a key benefit over tradition
forms of marketing media.
A simple concise site may only need a single navigation
menu system, typically not more than around six menu options.
For more content rich web sites it may be necessary
to have a global menu system covering the main content areas, which
is complimented by further content or audience specific menu systems
to ensure effective navigation through the website.
It is often unlikely that all the visitors to your
website are at the same level of understanding or require the same
level of detail. This is where active links within a page come into
their own. They provide additional information to those visitors
that may require more information or an explanation on a particular
aspect.
Menu structures can be created in a variety or combination
of ways: -
- Using words e.g. about us, contact us etc
- Using symbols
- Using pictures
Often a combination of text and images is an
effective way of making the meaning clear and visual appeal.
Many web sites are now database driven. If your
website has a database in it you need to make sure the specification
for this is well documented and agreed too. You need to think about
the storage and reporting requirements of the database and how the
data collected is presented. In addition there may be a need to
integrate the information collected with the rest of the information
in your business. Initial database population or migration is an
aspect that some time gets overlooked. Make sure the responsibilities
in this area are clear.
At the end of this stage, the structure and
navigation should be clearly documented and agreed with all the
necessary parties involved. It is not necessary to have the final
proof for the actual text of the web site at this stage but the
structure must be defined and agreed.
Stage 7) Design
The design phase should not commence unless the structure
is clear. It is equivalent to an architect designing a building
without knowing what the building has to achieve and accommodate.
This is the most common mistake made … even by many web design companies.
It is down to a natural desire to produce something visual as soon
as possible.
The design of a web site creates an immediate impact
and is how someone will initially make a judgement before looking
further. A poor, cheap or inappropriate style may immediately send
the wrong messages about your company. We all know first impressions
count, and with a website the look of the design is key to setting
the right impression.
A good web site developer will take time to listen
to the a customer about the image they wish to portray. He will
also understand how to create the desired impression. The required
impression should be clearly documented for clarity. The following
(as a minimum) should normally be agreed in advance of any design
concepts being produced.
- Nature of the audience(s)
- Impression required
- Use of pictures
- Use of colours
- How the navigation options are to be displayed
- Existing branding and logos
- Any requirement to adhere to existing standards
- The consistent information or links that need to appear on
every page of the web site
A good developer will provide between 2 and
3 initial design concepts where necessary (usually one page per
concept, but may be more for larger web sites). The customer needs
to feedback on the concepts produced with a view to the developer
creating a final concept for approval and sign off. Getting views
from customer and other third parties willing to be candid helps
to ensure the appropriate impressions are being made.
The objective of this stage is sign off of an
agreed concept. The requirements and design need to be set in stone
at this point to avoid further effort and cost before the project
is finished.
Stage 8) Development Tools and
Hosting
Web sites are getting more sophisticated in their
capability, much of the capability is dependant on the web site
hosting providers having specific hosting platforms and hosting
software to support these new features.
Where possible try to go to a web site development
company that will arrange the hosting for you and take responsibility
for solving problems irrelevant of whether they are caused by the
website or hosting platform. Paston Chase are ideally positioned
to assist as we develop and host web sites using well established
industry standard software and our own in house resources. We can
be your one stop shop for website development, hosting, security
considerations, domain names, email response forms and email lists
for user groups, as well as helping you through the whole process
and much more besides.
If you have a need to continually update your website,
with new events or news or opportunities, make sure you find a company
that is able to offer you the ability to do this yourself using
basic keyboard skills. This will reduce your cost of running the
site and increase your responsiveness to your customers. There is
nothing worse than a web site with a news page that was last updated
two years ago.
Stage 9) Testing
The most common errors are: -
- Missing links - pages missing or links not named correctly
- Email response forms that don't work or stop working
- Missing pictures
- Grammatical and typographic errors
- Version control issues, which mean those old corrected errors
reappearing at some point in the future.
- The site taking too long to load - usually due to pictures and
images not being optimised for use on a website, or due to inappropriate
or excessive use of pictures/animation.
Most web development companies will add content
as it is sent to them and paste it into the website…. So the "rubbish
in" … "rubbish out" principle tends to apply too.
There is no substitute for thorough testing of
the whole site by you, the customer and getting a number of
people to test the site feeding back through a single point of contact
in your organisation, to avoid multiple versions of the same correction.
We also recommend you check your web site at
least every quarter to ensure everything is still working, as it
should. For instance external links to other sites may have changed
or the response email may have stopped working. The web site may
have slowed down, as the hosting company may not have increased
its hosting capacity in line with the new business it has taken
on.
Stage 10) Maintenance, Updating
and Monitoring Performance
It is unlikely that an effective web site can be run without
some maintenance updating and performance measurement.
The maintenance aspects should have already been thought
about during the development process. In situations where the information
needs to be updated on a regular basis, you may wish to be able
to do this easily yourself. A number of web development companies
now have the tools and experience to do this for you, Paston Chase
is one of these. If you want your developer to do updates for you
we recommend agreeing a schedule of rates and service level in advance
to reduce the likelihood of future issues on this matter.
A web site is one of the few marketing tools where
you can directly measure the impact and success of what has been
created.
For web sites hosted by Paston Chase we can offer
very comprehensive web site visitors statistics. The information
is far more detailed than a simple hit counter and can provides
an valuable insight in to the effectiveness of a web site and how
it can be improved and developed. This feedback information is available
at any time through a password protected web site which presents
the information for your own web site in both graphical and numerical
format totalling over thirty key performance measurements.
Common Mistakes
The ten most common mistakes
made when developing a web site.
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