Web Design: Planning

The planning stage of web design is very important. Many people regard it as unecessary paperwork and ignore it. However it can save you a lot of time to have a clear purpose when designing your website, and it can save you a lot of time.

Structure

Unless you are building a site using a software or CMS like Wordpress or Drupal that has a structure build into it, you may wish to spend some time thinking about how you are going to structure your site. This entails figuring out how you want your website to branch out.

Generally, you don’t want too many levels of organization, that way all your pages are more easily accessible. For example, you could have a Services page and a Resources page and then have some more level of subdivision which includes pages that detail the services you offer and resources for people within your field of expertise.

An example of what NOT to do, would be to have an Articles page which divides into Resources and Services which leads down to various articles that contain special topics within them. If that were to happen, any visitor would have to click through a lot of hyperlinks to finally get to the page they wanted to view. If your site must be organized this way, create a sitemap or have site search to help expediate the process of finding pages.

Goal/Purpose

What is your website made for? If you say, “My site doesn’t have a purpose, I’m just using it to post my personal thoughts on the uses of rubber bands,” then that’s exactly what your purpose is.

By having a purpose for your website, you create a direction for your website and make clear to yourself what the image and the target demographic of your site is. Generally, if you’re not planning to create a major corporation out of your website, you don’t want to target every living internet user in the world.

It also helps you when you are designing you websites image to have an idea of what your site does in mind. If you are providing help and knowledge for professionals, you may wish to create a cleaner site with less bells and whistles and use more conservative colors.

Other

Other things that should be done during the planning stages of a website are highly dependent on what kind of website you are making.

Commercial website or any other website seeking monetary gains should definitely have a business plan written. It doesn’t have to be a full one, but a mini-plan should be written detailing their marketing strategy and features. The should list what competitive edge they have over others and what features they will include. Will the market through opt-in emails? Will they create a monthly newsletter? etc.

Sites providing infomation on their brick-and-mortar business should definitely plan out a FAQ and how they are going to create a quality website. These sites are an extension of the business they represent as people looking for quick information on the businesses will often look online for contact information or general questions. A good website can also help create validity for your business, despite a common notion that websites aren’t required if their businesses are running fine already.

Blogs, resources, and hobby sites generally don’t need as much planning because of the expected informality of their websites.