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If your design process usually starts with getting the clients logo,
and then designing a layout that compliments (or sometimes ignores) the
company colours, stop right there.
Backtrack.
You are a problem solver
Web
design is full of problems looking for solutions. Unfortunately too
many designers (and clients) forget or ignore the problem they are
trying to solve, and instead focus on just the aesthetics instead of
looking at the bigger picture of what the site is trying to achieve.
This should cause us to start asking ourselves what our role as
"designer" is exactly.
The question "what is design?"
is always a good way to spark debate amongst designers. I believe
design is creating an artistic or skilful solution to solve a given
problem. It's not purely aesthetic or purely functional, but a
combination of both to serve a specific purpose.
Websites
are built to sell things, promote people or businesses, provide
information, connect people, and store content. Each type of site has
specific challenges and problems that must be overcome to make the site
function in the best way possible. The challenges you need to solve are
often big picture things, like the best way of connecting with the
target audience of a site. They could be things to do with process,
like the most efficient way of collecting credit card details from
users. They could be information visualization, such as the best way to
present a complex table of data, or they could be simple things like
how big to make a button or a heading in relation to the rest of the
page. Regardless of the size of the problem, your job is to solve these
problems, not just to make the problems look prettier.
Redefining your process
If
you're quite happy making websites that are pretty, but don't
contribute anything to making the business more successful, then this
probably isn't the article for you. The more web designers there are in
the world like that, the easier it is for the rest of us to stand out.
With
a lot of processes, I find that the most efficient ones are
personalised to the user. By that I mean you don't need to follow the
process guidelines below exactly, but try using them as a guide and see
if they work for you, and build on them or change things if you find it
makes you more effective. Blindly following what others preach without
asking questions leads to lots of problems, especially with processes.
1. Gather Requirements
All
web projects should start with a requirements gathering phase.
Requirements gathering isn't about completely defining the project,
it's about creating an alignment between your project expectations and
those of your clients and setting a common project direction.
Clients
that have never been part of a website development project will often
have a limited idea of their own requirements and in most cases list
these in terms of page names or functions. Think along the lines of
statements like “I want a website with a homepage, about, products, and
a contact us page or I want a website that allows me to sell my
products online. Now think about all the websites you have encountered
that meet those requirements and the variation between them. Clearly
these requirements are not enough so the classic one word questions
need to be asked "Why? What? How? Who?"
Why do you want a homepage? What are you trying to achieve with a products page? How do you want your online sales to occur? Who is your target audience/market?
These
questions are your first real opportunity to demonstrate your
professional approach by digging deeper into the client's needs and
finding the underlying reasons driving them toward the website project.
Requirements gathering almost always includes requirements guidance. If
your client's why, what, how, and who are not what they should be guide
them toward reasons and approaches that you know work.
By
the end of this stage in the process you should understand what the
website project is trying to achieve and broadly speaking how it should
achieve it.
2. Set Goals
In this
phase you should set specific, measurable and achievable goals for the
project. You will need to take the objectives established in the
requirements gathering stage and pose them in formats that can be
tracked, measured and reviewed. Working with your client you have
already established what you want to achieve and the broad approach for
achieving and setting goals correctly will allow you to know when you
have done your job, what if anything went wrong, and where to go for
future improvements.
This may be things like
increasing traffic by 40%, or increasing the number of enquiries or
sales by a certain number. You can (and should) use stats packages such
as Google analytics or Mint to track these once the site goes live.
3. Information Architecture
This
is when you compile the requirements you have gathered into a cohesive
site structure. Think about the navigation, the hierarchy various items
on a page have, and how users are actually going to interact with your
site. This can be a fairly complex role for larger sites, and I would
suggest hiring someone, or at least reading some articles on information architecture to get a better understanding of this step.
4. Visual Design
Hopefully
this is the part you were good at to begin with. While how pretty a
site is isn't everything, it's not nothing either. A professional
design adds a sense of trustworthiness to a business, and good use of
design principles like colour, relative size, contrast, all help a
site's usability as well as its attractiveness.
5. Site Build and Release
While
it's not necessary for the designer to also build the site, it
definitely helps if the designer knows the medium. If you are a
designer with a print background, the best thing you can do for your
web design skills is learn CSS and HTML. You'll learn quickly what you
can and can't do on the web, and this will help your final products
immensely.
6. Review and Improve
Once
your website project has been planned, designed, built and released it
would be easy to think your job was finished. It's not.
This stage is crucial for your own growth and improvement as a website
designer but it is also essential for your clients. For both you and
your clients this allows you to refine your approach and understand how
well you are performing. Clients quite rightly want to know that the
investment they have made in you and your service was worthwhile. When
you are able to demonstrate this with real and valuable results they
are also more likely to continue to invest.
Special thanks to Travis Houghton, Sales manager at Enlighten Designs.
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