You may be on your first website. But more likely you're faced with redesigning a website that isn't functioning as well as it should. I see 12 vital decisions involved with developing a website, and I want to explain them with you in mind:
.You're the owner or marketing director of a small business and know that getting your website to pull its share of the load is vital for success. But your budget is severely limited!
.You've just been assigned the task of redoing your company's website.
Congratulations, now you can be blamed if things don't work well. :-)
.You've volunteered to take on your church or organization website and make some sense out of it -- without offending the person who built it in the first place.
.This time around you've decided to outsource the job, but you have no idea of how to supervise a design company to make sure it does what you need. Good luck!
I want to help. When I built my first website in 1995 at the very beginning of the commercial Web, I didn't have a clue how to proceed. In those days there was no one to guide me. I've made every mistake you can think of -- some more than once, I hate to admit.
Since then I've built and assisted with dozens of online stores and hundreds of websites for all kinds of businesses and organizations, from mom and pops to major corporations and international organizations. I don't design websites for others these days, but I actively develop and maintain my own site.
There are twelve critical places in building a website where you must make the right decision, or you'll have to repeat this task again and again until you get it right. I won't be talking about how to write HTML; I want to help you with the mindset, the basic approach. I want to take you by the hand and lead you through the critical decisions. The better you grasp these essential points, the better your website will work and the happier camper you'll be.
Okay, let's roll up our sleeves and get started. By the way, why don't you print out this document and then mark it up with your thoughts and ideas as you read. It's designed to serve as a worksheet to clarify your thinking and provide direction at various stages of the project. If you decide to outsource the project, you'll want to share a copy of your marked-up copy of this document with your website designer. Print it out!
1. Determine Your Website's Chief Purpose
When you begin a website, you must have your main purpose clearly in mind. I say this because it's easy to have conflicting purposes.
. If you're a website design firm, you may want to show off your high tech goodies with your client's site as the showpiece.
. If you're an employee stuck with this task, you may want to look good for your bosses and not do anything for which you can be blamed -- you've got to protect your backside.
. If you're a volunteer, you may just want an excuse to tinker and be praised for it.
. If you're a business owner, you probably care about the bottom line. You're wondering, How much this will cost? and Will it be worth it in the long run ?
Dear friends, recognize your own needs -- they're legitimate. But to build an effective website, you've got to look at the business's or organization's needs and make those primary. From the organization's perspective, what must this website do in order to be successful?
Let's look at some common website purposes. Put an X next to all that apply
. Build your brand. Create an online brochure that will help potential clients, customers, and partners learn about your company and look at it in a favorable light. You're trying to enhance your brand or organization image. I've heard people disparage this kind of website as "brochure-ware." But this is very legitimate for some kinds of companies, especially local businesses or organizations that aren't trying to conduct national or international commerce. You want people to know who you are, what you do, where to find you, and how to contact you.
. Provide product information to drive local sales of your products and services at dealer locations. Auto sites are a good example. Many manufacturers don't sell on their sites, but point people to retailers who carry their products.
.Sell advertising. A few sites are designed to sell advertising -- Yahoo!, Google, and other portal sites are examples. But these days, there's far too much advertising space and not nearly enough money to fill it all. Internet advertising is improving, but is still under-priced. You may be able to sell a little advertising if you're a portal site for an industry, or perhaps put some Google AdSense ads on your site. But these aren't big money-makers. Look at advertising sales as a hopeful bonus, not as a sure thing.
. Sell products or services directly over the Internet. You want to conduct e-commerce and sell to a national or international market. You'll have some kind of ordering system for one or more products, or perhaps an extensive online catalog. You may offer an online service that can be delivered over the Internet or that can be initiated online.
.Earn affiliate commissions for sales and leads generated through links on your website. Savvy marketers are building microsites designed to generate search engine traffic for a particular hot product or service. When a visitor clicks on one of their links, he is referred to an e-commerce site, and, if a sale results, the affiliate gets a commission. Perhaps a form on your site generates leads or subscriptions for another company.
. Provide customer service and support. Websites are a great place for troubleshooting guides, FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), technical information, etc. You can generate Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) labels. You can provide multiple ways for your customers to contact you (see under Point #9 below).
. Save money by means of online efficiencies. Companies have used the Internet to save billions of dollars. Taking orders online with real-time credit card authorization saves paying call center operators and cuts entry errors. Online catalogs save lots in paper, printing, and distribution costs. Online FAQs and knowledge bases cut the number of customer service personnel you need. And I'm just scratching the surface here.
What's the design decision here ? To be clear and focused about your site's objectives and purposes.
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Web Marketing Today
Friday, June 1, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Simple Design Tips for Non-Designers
Web design is an interestingly unique skill. Due to its infancy, it is a career in which many professionals have very little formal training. Designers may not have training in programming and programmers rarely have training in design. As much as I understand and appreciate design, I'm more of a programmer at heart. My design skills aren't very impressive. I've picked up a few little tricks over the past few months that I thought others more inclined to programming may find useful.
I've prepared the following quick list of tips that I've found useful in improving my design skills and appreciation of design. In some cases, I'm very aware that there are industry standard terms, but the point of this isn't to teach a full course on typography or color theory, but rather to provide some simple tips that can be used as a starting point for improving some basic design skills.
Don't Underestimate the Power of Typography
Experiment with different line-heights, letter-spacing, and word-spacing with your headlines and body text. Try using all uppercase in some situations. You may not realize it at first, but those kind of changes play a huge role in your visual design as well as readability. I'm not just talking about headlines either. Experiment with your body text fonts and spacing. You'll be amazed at the improvements. If you'd like to learn more, I strongly suggest the more detailed explanation of typography by Mark Boulton and Cameron Moll's advice on typeface selection.
Discover & Understand Your Unique Style
All too often, new designers look at other designer's for inspiration. This can definitely be useful, but is much more useful after you understand your own style. Embrace the way you design and what works for you before you try to draw inspiration from someone else's style.
When designing for clients, you always want to put their design needs before your style. However, it's alright for that design to have hints of your style. It's what makes your designs unique. Focus on their business needs first and determine what is appropriate. If you know yourself, you'll be able to use your own style better as a result.
Start Simple
If you want to really polish your design skills, try designing for a little while without extra graphics or photos. This forces you to have a better understanding of how the more subtle design elements work together to achieve their own state of zen. If there's no graphics, all you can worry about is typography, color, and layout. If that's all you've got to work with, you better bet you'll learn to understand your choices on a slightly deeper level.
Use a Variety of Colors
Finding the right colors can be difficult as well. Once you find them though, they can help a design fall right into place. Many new designers have a hard time using the right amount of colors. I've found the sweet spot to be around 4-5 colors not including black or white. They don't have to be completely unique colors, but you should at least try using different shades of a color. For example, Jon Hicks has always done this exceedingly well with different greens. If you need help picking out a color palette, find a photo you like and pixelate it. Using different colors helps add another layer of variety and interest.
Content is King
Trying to design without content is like trying to drive a car without fuel. You can't get anywhere. Pieces of content are your design. Whether it's body text, headlines, dates, photos, or graphics, if you don't have content to drive the design, you're going to have a rough time. I always start off with more content elements than I need and then start cutting them as I realize they aren't needed.
Start Big
Start out with your big elements first. Figure out a high level layout that makes sense for your content. Then once you have the page laid out, you can pick one piece of content at a time and figure out the details. Try designing just that one piece without any regard for the surrounding elements. This lets you focus and not get distracted by trying to do too much at once. Besides, you can always integrate all the pieces back together in the end. Also, when working on layouts, make sure you are very aware of how the reader's eye will move across the page. There should be one emphasis, with other parts that smoothly and seamlessly guide the eye across your design.
Worry About Details at the End
If you start designing your graphic bullets before you've even chosen a logical page layout or color scheme, you're getting ahead of yourself. Of course, you may find that the layout or color scheme need to change later, but that's alright. Just keep moving forward. Iron out the details after you've taken care of the big stuff.
Rapid Fire Design / Keep it Moving
If you sit there designing for hours and are never happy, that's just how it goes. You'll always be your toughest critic, and the longer you look at your work, the less you're going to like it. In these situations, I'll timebox myself. I give myself 10 minutes and force myself to work as fast possible to create a basic design. Then I repeat it a few more times until I have several to compare. During this process, I don't undo anything, I just keep it going and force myself to make happy mistakes. Don't let yourself get hung up on pixels or details, just make some sort of forward progress.
Summary
These are by no means meant to be a deeply professional and highly profound series of rules. I chose not to try to explain kerning, leading, gutters, or any of that. I just wanted to throw out some basic tips that have helped me improve my design chops or break out of irritating ruts.
Author : Garrett
I've prepared the following quick list of tips that I've found useful in improving my design skills and appreciation of design. In some cases, I'm very aware that there are industry standard terms, but the point of this isn't to teach a full course on typography or color theory, but rather to provide some simple tips that can be used as a starting point for improving some basic design skills.
Don't Underestimate the Power of Typography
Experiment with different line-heights, letter-spacing, and word-spacing with your headlines and body text. Try using all uppercase in some situations. You may not realize it at first, but those kind of changes play a huge role in your visual design as well as readability. I'm not just talking about headlines either. Experiment with your body text fonts and spacing. You'll be amazed at the improvements. If you'd like to learn more, I strongly suggest the more detailed explanation of typography by Mark Boulton and Cameron Moll's advice on typeface selection.
Discover & Understand Your Unique Style
All too often, new designers look at other designer's for inspiration. This can definitely be useful, but is much more useful after you understand your own style. Embrace the way you design and what works for you before you try to draw inspiration from someone else's style.
When designing for clients, you always want to put their design needs before your style. However, it's alright for that design to have hints of your style. It's what makes your designs unique. Focus on their business needs first and determine what is appropriate. If you know yourself, you'll be able to use your own style better as a result.
Start Simple
If you want to really polish your design skills, try designing for a little while without extra graphics or photos. This forces you to have a better understanding of how the more subtle design elements work together to achieve their own state of zen. If there's no graphics, all you can worry about is typography, color, and layout. If that's all you've got to work with, you better bet you'll learn to understand your choices on a slightly deeper level.
Use a Variety of Colors
Finding the right colors can be difficult as well. Once you find them though, they can help a design fall right into place. Many new designers have a hard time using the right amount of colors. I've found the sweet spot to be around 4-5 colors not including black or white. They don't have to be completely unique colors, but you should at least try using different shades of a color. For example, Jon Hicks has always done this exceedingly well with different greens. If you need help picking out a color palette, find a photo you like and pixelate it. Using different colors helps add another layer of variety and interest.
Content is King
Trying to design without content is like trying to drive a car without fuel. You can't get anywhere. Pieces of content are your design. Whether it's body text, headlines, dates, photos, or graphics, if you don't have content to drive the design, you're going to have a rough time. I always start off with more content elements than I need and then start cutting them as I realize they aren't needed.
Start Big
Start out with your big elements first. Figure out a high level layout that makes sense for your content. Then once you have the page laid out, you can pick one piece of content at a time and figure out the details. Try designing just that one piece without any regard for the surrounding elements. This lets you focus and not get distracted by trying to do too much at once. Besides, you can always integrate all the pieces back together in the end. Also, when working on layouts, make sure you are very aware of how the reader's eye will move across the page. There should be one emphasis, with other parts that smoothly and seamlessly guide the eye across your design.
Worry About Details at the End
If you start designing your graphic bullets before you've even chosen a logical page layout or color scheme, you're getting ahead of yourself. Of course, you may find that the layout or color scheme need to change later, but that's alright. Just keep moving forward. Iron out the details after you've taken care of the big stuff.
Rapid Fire Design / Keep it Moving
If you sit there designing for hours and are never happy, that's just how it goes. You'll always be your toughest critic, and the longer you look at your work, the less you're going to like it. In these situations, I'll timebox myself. I give myself 10 minutes and force myself to work as fast possible to create a basic design. Then I repeat it a few more times until I have several to compare. During this process, I don't undo anything, I just keep it going and force myself to make happy mistakes. Don't let yourself get hung up on pixels or details, just make some sort of forward progress.
Summary
These are by no means meant to be a deeply professional and highly profound series of rules. I chose not to try to explain kerning, leading, gutters, or any of that. I just wanted to throw out some basic tips that have helped me improve my design chops or break out of irritating ruts.
Author : Garrett
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