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14 Step Web Design Process
Designing a web page or a web site is a complex task. Only
through proper planning and following a defined process will you obtain
positive results with the least amount of effort. For the client, this
translates to meeting the client's goals with the least amount of expense
possible. Below is the 14-step process used by After Hours Computing in
all web page or web site development processes. Clicking on any of these
14 steps will take you to an expanded explanation of each.
2. Pick A Flavor. Now it is time to decide the tone of your web page/site. This is done by defining a style to be used. The style can be formal, informal, funny, serious, high tech, no tech, etc. The style should really be derived from the goal of your web page/site. One component of the style is the pattern for presentation. The pattern can be topical (most common for web pages/sites), chronological, geographical, cause & effect, problem & solution, or pro & con. Further, style incorporates such things as color, graphics, and spatial composition. Last but not least, you must consider your audience. Although your personality may dictate a particular style, it may not be best suited for your audience. The most important goal in this process is to ensure your "flavor" matches your goal and your company image. 3. Story Boarding. Once we know why we are doing this we need to layout a basic design. This is often referred to as "Story Boarding. This can be as simple as a sketch on a piece of paper or as elaborate as a twenty-page report with professionally designed graphics. The goal here is to plan how the pages will fit together and develop a basic layout of how the pages should look. The "Story Boarding" process helps you take the idea from your head and place in on a medium that can be shared with the developers. By the end of the process the general content of each page and the flow between the pages should be fully defined. 4. Picture Time. With the basic layout and style selection accomplished, it is time to get serious about your selection of graphics for your pages. Some styles are well suited for minimal graphics and some are graphics intensive. When working with graphics there are some very important considerations to be made. You must remember that pictures are usually quite large when initially taken or scanned. Large picture sizes can severely degrade the speed at which your page/site loads and therefore impact the potential for customers to visit your page/site. Of course, smaller picture sizes result in less graphical detail. A balance must be struck between the quality and the size to ensure the best possible load time for your potential audience. We have all the tools necessary to help with the processing of your graphics to help achieve this balance. 5. Color and Background Decisions This is often one of the most difficult steps in the development process. Color says a lot of different things to different people. You goal is to pick colors that enhance the "readability" of your pages/site without being drab or uninteresting. Color selection also relates back to style and should be weighed heavily. The background is also very important. Not only does the background color set the rest of your color choices, but it also impacts the readability of your pages/site. The type of background you want may look good by itself, but once you start adding text to the page you may find that the background starts to look terrible or the background interferes with your ability to read what is on the page. Certain color combinations may look just fine with one type of background but would be wholly inappropriate with another type of background. With the large selection to choose from, this again goes back to individual taste. We will be more than happy to help you with your selections and provide you varying samples of different possible combinations. 6. Pick Your Gizmos. Another important design consideration is adding the "WOW" to your page. Gizmos range from simple buttons to very complex banners, active graphics, to even having games on your pages. You may also want to include sounds or complete video segments on your pages/site. Several considerations must be made when deciding which gizmos to add. The first question you should ask is, "What value is added to the functionality or understanding on my page?" The second consideration should be the impact on the speed of delivery. While some really fancy gizmos can be added with very little impact, the more elaborate gizmos can add extensively to the size of your page and speed of execution. Finally, you have to ask yourself whether or not the additional time and cost of developing or adding these gizmos is worth it. Some gizmos are very simple and very inexpensive to implement. Others are very complex and time consuming. If you are not sure, just ask us and we will let you know what is simple and inexpensive and what would be extreme. 7. What You Meant To Say. A lot of work so far has gone into the development process and we have not even said a single thing. Now is the time to actually write the text to be included on the pages/site. Everyone has a different style of writing and we are not here be experts in English. We will definitely work with you to provide any assistance we can, but we do not profess to be the "end all" when it comes to writing (remember that we are geeks who work with short and choppy computer languages). Two approaches to this are to use a word processing program to develop your outline or to perform a "cut & paste" to a physical storyboard. Once your text is designed, it should be provided to us in an electronic medium (contact us for the file type to use). We will then "cut & paste" from your documents to ensure we do not loose anything in the translation to the actual code. 8. Geeking - Round 1. Now it is time for us to get to work on the actual development. With all of your inputs provided in the steps above, we will begin writing the code for your web pages/site. Depending on the complexity of the web pages/site, this can take from a single day to a month or more. We will keep you well advised during the development process to ensure you know when pages or groups of pages are ready for your review. As your pages are developed they will be placed on a web space for you to review and provide us feedback. Remember that while computers have come a long way, it is not always possible to do everything you want. We will try our best to give you what you want. However, the complexity of the web and the web browsers available somewhat limits us in our abilities. We design our code to be "cross-platform" so your page will be seen in a similar manner regardless of the type of computer or monitor resolution used by the audience. 9. Proofing - Round 1. We call it round one because this is just the first of several reviews. Our first review is intended to merely evaluate the style and functionality of the pages/site. While we do encourage you to point out spelling or grammatical errors, our intent here is to proof the "look and feel" of the pages/site. Please do not think that a large majority of spelling or grammatical errors are a result of poor quality control on our part. Understand that we sometimes focus more on the technical aspects of programming the pages/site and may ignore the actual text in order to expedite developing all of the program code. A second review for spelling, grammar, and other aspects will be accomplished later in the development process. Remember that this part of the process may involve several individual reviews as we make minor changes to the pages/site. 10. Geeking - Round 2. After we receive feedback on our initial design efforts, it is time for us to get back to work making all of the changes. In addition to working on the technical nature of things, we also begin our internal review for spelling, grammar, and other issues. While it may seem like a simple process, this is actually quite complicated. The inclusion of the code snippets severely hampers our ability to use commercial spelling and grammar checking programs. Therefore, sometimes we overlook things. Again, our focus during this stage is to work out any remaining technical issues and ensure you web pages/site work without error on most common operating systems and web browsers. 11. Proofing - Round 2. Now it is time for you to perform the serious review of our product for errors, potential legal issues, and other things requiring correction. No matter how careful we all are, our excitement about having a spiffy web page/site can result in us overlooking things. Particular attention to potential legal issues must be made before we hit the final phases of development. Copyrights on images, potential legal disputes over libel or slander, potential legal disputes over misrepresentation in advertising should all be examined. Once we receive your feedback on these matters we will make any necessary corrections and begin the final processing of your pages/site. 12. Mr. English Professor. Now we get dead serious about applying our best efforts to catch all typographical and grammatical errors. Although we have done this throughout the development process, this is the final review using our best commercial tools and personnel. Your inputs are always accepted and any decisions regarding writing style are strictly made by the customer. If you feel that anything needs to be changed, just let us know and we will do it. Remember that we have been looking at your pages for quite a while now and sometimes we just overlook things. However, we warranty our work for the lifetime of the page and will gladly correct any spelling or grammatical errors at any time. So, if between the two of us we happen to overlook something, we can always come back and fix it later at no additional charge. 13. Final Proofing - Approval. This is the final review of our work. You as the customer will review the product and give us a green light for deployment of the product. Although we are always willing to work with you to ensure you are happy with our product, we have to select a point to say we are done. This is the time where you let us know that the work meets your approval. 14. Get It Out There. Now we are ready to get the pages out there or to establish your web site. Actual deployment procedures can vary depending on your service provider or our business relationship. If you have your own site and feel comfortable with deploying it yourself, we will gladly provide you the finished project with deployment instructions. If you have asked us to establish your site for you, we will take the necessary steps to put your pages on a server and generate all of the necessary support code and scripts. In addition to placing the information on the server, we are prepared to assist in the registration your pages with the popular search engines on the web. Wow! Quite an extensive process. That is true, however, this is a tried and true development process and we have found that following these guidelines ensures the best finished product for your company. If we can be of further assistance to you in any way, please do not hesitate to contact us. |
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