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WHAT
TO LOOK FOR WHEN DESIGNING YOUR WEB SITE
This checklist will assist you with ensuring that
all the bases are covered as you design your website.
Ask yourself a variety of versions of the basic question,
What elements are necessary to develop a good Web
site? No matter what verbage you use to ask the
question, the answer is basically the same, so I've provided
you with a simple checklist of 10 things that you might
want to consider when developing your Web site.
- They
are:
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1
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SITE
GOALS
Before you begin your project, you must understand what
the intent of the site is. What do you and/or your clients
expect to achieve by having a Web site on the Internet?
Establish goals for the site, the more specific, the
better. Once you (and your clients, if you're doing
the site for hire) have a clear picture of the site's
purpose, you can move on to the next step. |
2
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TARGET
AUDIENCE
The site's Target Audience, that is to establish for
whom the site is intended to reach. Will it be for inter-office
use, public or wholesale sales, recruitment, entertainment
for kids, official business, communications, the elderly...?
Try to narrow it down as much as possible, so that you
know what tone the site should have to appeal to the
most specific intended audience. (If a site is to appeal
to many different TAs, then you might consider making
different themes within the same site to appeal to each
TA.) |
3
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DETERMINE
INTERACTIVITY
This is how site visitors will "experience" and interact
with the Web site. Determine, in advance, how you (and/or
your clients) want users to view, react to, and interact
with the site. |
4
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COMPETITION
Check out the competition. You want your site to be
the best of it's kind. What does the competition have
to offer? What are they doing wrong? How can your site
do it better? In what ways will your site have the competitive
edge? |
5
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DATA
FLOW
It's important to consider the flow of data within your
site. If you're building a content-heavy site, you need
to divide the data into bite-sized chunks that can be
divided into sections that will become categories (or
"main links" within your site). Some prefer using index
cards to organize their ideas, personally, I like drawing
flow charts on giant rolls of butcher paper. |
6
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DATA
DELIVERY
Determine the methods that you will use to distribute
the site's content. You may need different forms of
delivery for different kinds of data distribution. Consider
dynamic content, video streaming, and other methods
that may be appropriate for delivery of your data. |
7
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SITE
NAVIGATION
Here's where your site starts to take shape visually.
When deciding on the visual delivery, you're also deciding
what your delivery layout mechanisms will be. Will your
site have main navigation at the top of the site? Along
one side or the other? |
8
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VISUAL
DESIGN
This is your sites first and last impression. It's time
to determine your site's color scheme and other graphic
representations. If working on a corporate site, you
may need to coordinate graphic design and/or layout
with the graphics department. |
9
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REDESIGN
Don't be afraid to get lots of input on your site's
design. And don't get too fond of your site's first
design. Pushing your site through different design phases
helps to simplify and (hopefully) make the site more
effective as it matures. |
10
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SITE
LAUNCH
By this time, you're ready to present your site to the
rest of the World Wide Web. You should have all the
major bugs worked out, its been tested by a variety
of humans in the previous section and revisions have
been made where appropriate. Now, that you've built
the best site of its kind, let's see how it stands up
in real life. |
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