For those beginning web design, it's always easy to get carried away with all these 'cool' new web technologies. New marketing avenues, new SEO tools, the potential of social media, web 2.0 properties - well, it is very much a pretty exciting space to be in.
But with more and more web technologies coming into the landscape, providing a comprehensive user experience for web audiences is fast becoming less of the problem (I can still remember the days when opt-in boxes had to be hand-coded). In place of that, the challenge then becomes streamlining.
Whereas before, having a website is already a cool thing in and of itself, it would be hard luck to find a single competitor without visibility online nowadays. With audiences constantly bombarded with possibilities, options and opportunities in every inch of web real estate, the one with the most focused message to the most targeted audience lends itself to competitive advantage.
With the current trend of events in the web design space, the website planning process becomes critical even more so than before. Not only does it describe the website project for the designer, but more importantly, it identifies the boundaries, the limits.
And though word 'limit' may have been taboo before,' these days, it's necessarily a way of life. Those days when the buzz phrase was to 'think outside the box' is all, but gone. What this age calls for is the ability to find people who fit into a pre-defined, pre-constructed box, which the designer has prettied up, made visible and usable for them.
The website planning process (if taken seriously) is the most excruciating for one reason: it's the most strategic. Whereas the assembly is more iterative and time-consuming, planning a website requires more deduction.
More and more elements are coming into play in the design of a website. There are usability considerations to think of, accessibility guidelines to mind, information management and architecture challenges to deal with... the list goes on. Furthermore, if the goal of your website ultimately has something to do with monetization or leverage for a brick-and-mortar business, then not only do you have to challenge yourself with a business strategy, but also, an online marketing strategy.
Some might argue that those strategies are beyond the scope of the role and responsibilities of the designer. The fact is, just about every process that goes on online can be integrated into the website - your target audience expects nothing less. For instance, avenues like social media and web 2.0 properties, those are strategies for marketing. Whereas before, designers need not worry about those sorts of marketing concerns during the web design process, nowadays, the website needs to be designed ready to work with functionalities offered by those types of technology.
Here, we loop back to that concept of streamlining. Sure, it'd be fun and pretty and cool to integrate with just about every technology out there. But again, the designer needs to plan and map out which is unnecessary and which adds value to the website, which serves to be distracting and which lends itself ultimately to better user experience.
The more robust a plan you have for your website, the easier it is to later on assemble and maintain it later on. There is no doubt a plethora of web design resources out there that you can refer to, but not so many goes comprehensively into the website planning process. For a step-by-step walkthrough about how to plan a website, consider resources from website-planning.net. For a start, read through the introductory article, Website Planning: Beginning Web Design.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5232902
But with more and more web technologies coming into the landscape, providing a comprehensive user experience for web audiences is fast becoming less of the problem (I can still remember the days when opt-in boxes had to be hand-coded). In place of that, the challenge then becomes streamlining.
Whereas before, having a website is already a cool thing in and of itself, it would be hard luck to find a single competitor without visibility online nowadays. With audiences constantly bombarded with possibilities, options and opportunities in every inch of web real estate, the one with the most focused message to the most targeted audience lends itself to competitive advantage.
With the current trend of events in the web design space, the website planning process becomes critical even more so than before. Not only does it describe the website project for the designer, but more importantly, it identifies the boundaries, the limits.
And though word 'limit' may have been taboo before,' these days, it's necessarily a way of life. Those days when the buzz phrase was to 'think outside the box' is all, but gone. What this age calls for is the ability to find people who fit into a pre-defined, pre-constructed box, which the designer has prettied up, made visible and usable for them.
The website planning process (if taken seriously) is the most excruciating for one reason: it's the most strategic. Whereas the assembly is more iterative and time-consuming, planning a website requires more deduction.
More and more elements are coming into play in the design of a website. There are usability considerations to think of, accessibility guidelines to mind, information management and architecture challenges to deal with... the list goes on. Furthermore, if the goal of your website ultimately has something to do with monetization or leverage for a brick-and-mortar business, then not only do you have to challenge yourself with a business strategy, but also, an online marketing strategy.
Some might argue that those strategies are beyond the scope of the role and responsibilities of the designer. The fact is, just about every process that goes on online can be integrated into the website - your target audience expects nothing less. For instance, avenues like social media and web 2.0 properties, those are strategies for marketing. Whereas before, designers need not worry about those sorts of marketing concerns during the web design process, nowadays, the website needs to be designed ready to work with functionalities offered by those types of technology.
Here, we loop back to that concept of streamlining. Sure, it'd be fun and pretty and cool to integrate with just about every technology out there. But again, the designer needs to plan and map out which is unnecessary and which adds value to the website, which serves to be distracting and which lends itself ultimately to better user experience.
The more robust a plan you have for your website, the easier it is to later on assemble and maintain it later on. There is no doubt a plethora of web design resources out there that you can refer to, but not so many goes comprehensively into the website planning process. For a step-by-step walkthrough about how to plan a website, consider resources from website-planning.net. For a start, read through the introductory article, Website Planning: Beginning Web Design.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5232902
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