Planning mat-153-web design 1

Concepting

Function

A good Web site can be your greatest advocate. It is on-call 24/7, 7 days a week. If properly designed, the site will consistently communicate your message and serve as a hub of information. It should serve as a means to accomplish your goals, whether they be to promote you or your brand, entertain, sell a product, or attract people to your cause.

It takes a little work to figure out the goals of the site.

Remeber to use the SMART standard for judging the quality of goals:

  • Secific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time delimited

Try to take what you or the client want to do and put it in a few sentences.

Another way to think of goals is prioritizing what the Web site needs to accomplish.

Focus on two sets of goals: business needs and user needs. The first set helps define the goals of the Web site. The second set sometimes gets lost. The designer should act as the voice of the user here, because if the users don't need the Web site for something, it will fail.

Focus

One of the most common mistakes made by new Web site developers is trying to cram too much information onto a site. First you should determine who your main audience is. This is where many sites become scattered. Determining who you will be catering to specifically will help determine the look, feel and personality of your site.

A site that contains too many branches of information can be confusing and chaotic. Viewers should easily be able to determine who you are, what your main goal is and what you want them to do.

Format

The Web site should be formatted with both the functionality and focus in mind. A clever layout that allows the user to easily navigate through all features and components is a must. If the user isn't able to find the information they're searching for within the first fifteen seconds, they will lose interest and leave the site.

From a design perspective, every page on the site should be branded with a consistent message.

Design Rational 
The brand personality, organizational associations, brand symbols and metaphors that will be defined for the web site. 

consider the following attributes based on your Design Rational:

  • The color scheme: background and font colors
  • The font type(s) which will be chosen
  • Page lay out: 1, 2 or 3 column, top or left side navigation
  • The look and feel and the imagery used to support your brand or to communicate your message