Our Website Design Process

Project Planning, Defining the Project Scope and Budget

We begin every project by looking at the reasons for the design/redesign. Sometimes these are clearly understood and a detailed technical specification is provided, but more often Clients are looking for guidance in this, we're always happy to help you develop a coherent strategy.

To do this we need to understand your customer's needs, we look at all possible solutions to meet or exceed their expectations. We look at your competitors' websites to get an understanding of what your customers are used to seeing. We look to take the best of what's already out there and improve anything we can, at all times our intention is to make it as simple as possible for them to buy from you.

We also look at your people and processes, the website should fit in with your existing workflow to ensure a smooth implementation without the need for your people to learn a whole new way of doing things. On many website projects we have linked website data directly to client's existing business systems.

When we have enough information we will discuss budget and time scales before presenting you with a realistic website strategy and a detailed proposal of how this will be achieved.

Phase 1 - Static Website Design

The vast majority of Websites we develop are database driven. They only need a handful of page templates to power the whole site, the content is inserted from the database when the page is requested at runtime. This ensures that maintenance is much simpler and small design changes can be made to the template, rather than to thousands of individual pages.

The first phase of a project is to design these templates in a static format; Initially these will be design roughs and are visual representations that show the structure, page layouts and the implied navigation and functionality. Later design iterations introduce fonts and colours. This is an excellent way to work as static designs can be constructed relatively quickly and amendments can be made without worrying about the effect the changes will have on other pages, the overall site structure, the database design or the content management system (amongst others).

Website Usability - the key to web survival

We have a good understanding of how customers use websites, and how they're likely to use yours. We design the website structure, page layouts, navigation system and everything else on the website around the customer's expectations and experience as well as good practice. However, there will normally be additional discussion around your corporate brand guidelines and the various expectations within your organisation, which if not addressed could impact on usability and customer experience of using your website, for example...

1. Your logo, corporate fonts, colours, etc. which may have been designed to look good on the side of a lorry in the 1960s, may not work on a website and may need adapting.
2. Your website design should be conventional, which probably sounds the same as boring to your creative people. Conventional design is the easiest for your customers to use and this should override personal preferences.
3. It isn't always easy to leverage your print marketing materials and convert them into an on-line 'brochure'. Web and Print are consumed differently, print is more of a linear medium while the web, by its very nature, has a more complex structure. Print has a fixed layout while the web is viewed at different sizes and layouts, print has embedded fonts and doesn't rely on an internet connection to view high resolution images.

Jakob Nielsen - Usability 101: Introduction to Usability

Substance over Style - the Design is a lens for viewing the Content

The design is about showcasing the content, not the designer. Website visitors will be reassured by a clean, professional design, but they won't be impressed by your flash movie intro., even though it's terribly clever and cutting edge. Page designs should be simple and clear, the clever and creative effort should be directed into crafting the copy and images.

Search Engine Design

A lot is made of the black art and science that is search engine optimisation (SEO). The fact is, a well designed website and good content is all you will ever need. You can spend as much money on SEO as you like, if you have the design basics wrong, and/or poor content presentation, you will almost certainly fail.

That's not to say you can't improve your rankings by tweaking the keywords in your meta title tags, adding sitemaps, etc. These things should have been considered in the design phase.

Use W3C guidelines to future proof your Website

This organisation publishes a list of guidelines for website design and development and plays a major part in shaping the growth of the World Wide Web. Following their guidelines equates to good practice generally, but also ensures your site will still work as the technology changes.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)