Grow Media » Web Development & Design

I know this has been done a thousand times before, but it is an important process for every web designer/developer to go through. It doesn’t matter if you publish the list to a blog or if you just write the list for yourself. Analyzing processes is an invaluable part of life. It is impossible to improve something without analyzing previous attempts and working out what can be changed and what can stay the same. Life is an iterative process with constant analysis both sub-conscious and conscious without which we wouldn’t survive very long.

So in the name of analysis and research we have put together a list of things that we feel are important to build a website. The list is in a somewhat chronological order starting with the planning stages. As always, this is not an exhaustive list by any means so please feel free to comment with your additions.

1. Keep it simple

The first and most important part of anything – not just web design – is KEEP IT SIMPLE. This should be an overarching thought throughout the entire process. Digg’s Founder, Kevin Rose gave a great presentation at FOWA London 2009. In the presentation he made the point that features should have to fight to stay in an application during the planning stages. Lets apply this to our situation. If you are planning a website and want to add a page to the site you should assume it is a bad idea until you can prove otherwise. It is the opposite of “Innocent until proven guilty”! It sounds like a hard way to build a site but it actually makes your life easier. It becomes harder for feature creep to occur and it maintains a simplicity to the project that makes it easier to design, develop and implement.

2. Target your audience

This point is targeted more towards building your own site. Targeting an audience should have already been done if you are working on a client project. Firstly, WHY are you creating a website? Once you answer that question it should be pretty easy to work out WHO you are creating it for. Knowing WHO has huge ramifications for how you build your site. You need to answer these questions before you can go any further.

3. Content is KING

Content is an extremely important part of building a website. Content can range from product data to an academic essay. At this point no design should be taking place. Before this can happen you need to get all your content together. I agree that this only occurs in a perfect world and in reality i.e. the majority of projects you will earn money for, the content is the last thing you get from a client no matter how many times you ask. That being said you should should strive for a perfect world with every project you embark on. The more content you can get at the beginning of a project the easier it makes your life. Every project I have worked on where the client has given me content at the beginning has been more successful than any of the projects where this hasn’t happened. By successful I mean in both client satisfaction and increased return on investment (ROI) for the client.

4. Get to the point

If you are in the web design/development industry make sure you either know how to write copy for the web or know someone who is a specialist web copywriter. I cannot over-exaggerate how important this is. Even if you are getting your content directly from your client I would recommend referring your client to a web copywriter before they pass on the content. Obviously you need to exercise judgement on this point. You need to be comfortable enough with your client to ask them to make changes to their content. If your client is not happy with what you are suggesting then it becomes a question of how far you are willing to push it. This again requires good judgement on your part.

If you do get the go ahead to work on the content then start by getting someone who has no affiliation to the client to read the content and make sure they understand everything that is being said. The content should be written in a way that is easy to skim and pick out the useful bits of information – that is how people read on the internet. Get to the point quickly and don’t deviate. The moment you deviate from the point users go to the next website. Don’t use overly complicated words, keep sentences and paragraphs short. Check spelling on everything and use the correct grammar for the language you are writing in. If you are creating a site in multiple languages make sure you use someone who is living in the country to translate. Having worked out your target audience you need to make sure you write the content for the target audience – don’t use confusing marketing babble.

5. Plan your navigation

Information architecture is a whole industry in itself. That might help you understand how important it is. The way you split up the content affects how users interact with the site, how easy it is for them to find specific content and therefore how likely they are to stay on the site. Planning and then designing your navigation is an involved process. It doesn’t just mean separating the content into HOME, ABOUT, CONTACT etc… It is about how a user gets around the site. If a user gets lost then they will leave almost instantly and probably never come back. The most important content needs to be easily accessible and also easily searchable. If your site has multiple levels, can a user get back to the home page when they are deep in the site hierarchy? One good way of planning for this eventuality is by adding breadcrumb navigation to the deeper pages.

Plan your navigation so it doesn’t confuse the user. Keep it in the same place across the site – if you want to move it for any reason then make it obvious by animating the transition from one place to another. Make the navigation obvious in appearance and also obvious as to where a user might end up if they click on it.

6. Design

You know what your website is about, who you want to visit it and you have all your content, now you can begin putting all the pieces together. Design is a simple discipline which can be defined as problem solving. Design can be beautiful, sexy, clean, bold or any other adjective you can think of, but that is all subjective. When all is said and done if it solves a problem then it can be considered a success. This makes it easier for us to analyze if the design is “good” in a far more objective way. Using an example of a site selling a product; the problem for this site is to sell product to customers, if the site sells a lot of product it has solved the problem and is designed well.

When you are designing a website make sure you know what the problems are (e.g. goals, client base etc…) and solve them. It is a great way to approach a project and it helps you differentiate between more important and less important features, taking us back to point number one – KEEP IT SIMPLE!