A quick guide to defining, designing and delivering your website
Tell us about your website project. Read and answer these questions.
A website is your most powerful and effective marketing tool. It’s accessible 24 hours a day, anywhere in the world. It allows your audience to access information, contact you, subscribe to your services or buy your products directly. And it’s easy to keep your content fresh and updated, respond to user feedback and adapt to changing needs.
The query “Why do we need a website?” has become “Why haven’t we got one yet?”
The next question is often: “How much will it cost?”
AN ARM AND A LEG?
Building or upgrading your site can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. No matter how simple or elaborate your site, the important thing is that you lay a solid foundation before you begin to build. Investing time in some basic planning stages will keep your costs down and deliver a site that suits your requirements now, and grows when you need it to. The cost of building your site depends, of course, on its complexity and function. Some websites sell products or services, others display images, share information or connect thousands of people. However complex or straightforward your site may be, invest your time early in the planning stages and you’ll save in the long run.
DEFINE. DESIGN. DELIVER. In order to provide you with time and cost estimates, we look at the three phases of the job: Define. Design. Deliver.
STRATEGY, MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS Before you can define what your online presence will be, you need to step back and consider your big picture. That means looking at your mission, strategic plan and branding, plus your marketing and communications strategy. You will also need to assess your existing tools (print materials, logo, retail presence) and determine how your website fits into the mix.
If you’re just starting up, you may be only beginning to develop your strategies. If you’re an individual or small business, your mission and strategic plan may be just a few sentences or paragraphs long. Or you may only need a simple site that informs users about your services, displays your work, or uses an e.commerce function to create an online store.
But if you are a mature organization looking at a first or second website, your history and experience will point the way to the rebranding opportunity your new site offers. Your large organization may require a comprehensive site aimed at diverse users. This multi-page site would feature wide-ranging content and functions including news, background research and archives, downloadable documents, password protected areas for internal use and discussion forums, dynamic calendar listings, pages for specific campaigns and issues and more.
CORE MESSAGES What are the most important things your audience needs to know about you or your organization? These core messages are the talking points and phrases you will repeat in your marketing, whether it’s an elevator pitch or an information package. They describe the essence of your story and what you want your audience to know, remember and act on.
VISUAL IDENTITY Do you have an eye-catching logo, colours that suggest who you are and a distinctive typographic identity that makes you stand out? If your answer is ‘yes’, you know the value of good design in shaping your brand. If you don’t, get busy! Your website should reflect and expand on your look, so it’s best to make those decisions before you build.
WHO IS YOUR ONLINE AUDIENCE? You might assume that the audience for your website is the same one that receives all your other materials. But a website can reach a new sector: a portion of your membership or potential clients who are not as receptive to — or easily reached by — your existing marketing.
A client of ours, the David Suzuki Foundation, decided several years ago to target web users with a revamped website and web-specific visuals and campaigns. The organization’s online membership in its Nature Challenge program and e.newsletter subscriber base has since sky-rocketed to about 300,000. And the web demographic is markedly younger than for its 38,000-circulation print publication, Finding Solutions. This younger audience is more likely to seek news and information online, and be receptive to email appeals that link them to the web. Many people are subscribing to RSS feeds that keep them up to date on fresh content from their favourite sites.
Defining your primary and secondary audiences is the single biggest factor in determining the purpose of your site.
SITE PURPOSE When your audience is visiting your site, what do you want them to do? Should users buy a product, learn more about you, sign a petition, answer a survey, subscribe to your newsletter, call you, email you, download materials, or read and comment on your blog? You should be able to answer these questions before you build or upgrade your website.
THE CONTENT OUTLINE The next step is to think about the content of your site so that it meets, attracts and maintains your audience by steering them to the desired actions.
Here’s what we have established so far:
- your mission and strategic plan
- your marketing strategy and communications plan
- your communications tools and how they all fit together to support your overall goals
- your core messages
- your visual identity
- your audience
- the purpose of your site
At this stage you’re ready to write a content outline identifying the different kinds of information your site needs to include.
Two broad points of entry for considering the outline are: 1) the site reflects your organizational structure and 2) it reflects what you want users to learn and do.
If your site is going to be small, writing the outline will be a quick Exercise. If your site serves a larger organization and a wider audience, the content outline will take into consideration different content types and methods of presentation that the web offers.
UPDATING YOUR SITE One of the big advantages of a web site is that material can be constantly changed, updated and added. Deciding who will do this and how it will be done will help determine the software used during site construction. Open source software applications like WordPress and Drupal make it increasingly easier for you to make changes on your own if you want.
DRAWING THE SITE MAP Using the content outline, the site or navigation map can be drawn. This is a blueprint of the whole site. It assigns content to various pages, and shows how the site will be organized, and how the user will navigate between pages. It also shows which pages will have additional functions such as shopping, video, password protected areas or databases.
All of these functions and features need to be considered and indicated in the map to understand the full range of the project.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO EVALUATE AND REVIEW THE SITE MAP Alterations to the structure, sections, products or services in your site as it’s being built can result in blown timelines and unanticipated costs. Since the site map is your blueprint, it’s vital that all members of the project team have considered, thoroughly reviewed and signed off on the map because…
…THIS IS HOW WE ESTIMATE THE COST OF DEVELOPING THE SITE With all of the above elements in place we’ll estimate how much work, time and money it takes to build and launch your website.
The four main areas to work on during construction are:
1) Content
2) Usability
3) Appearance
4) Visibility
Content and usability were considered while writing the outline. Combined with appearance they will determine how your audience interacts with the site.
Creating content It’s time to start writing, and finding or commissioning photos and illustration.
The key theme for web writing is: be brief. Most readers scan web text instead of reading it all. You want to write about half of what you would for a print piece. You need clear, active heads and subheads – more than in regular writing – to guide the reader through the page and site. We recommend that all content be written and edited by someone familiar with writing web copy.
Special attention needs to be paid to keywords. These are the words and terms that best describe who you are and what you do. You’ll have identified them in your core messages. They’re especially important for your site since search engines use them to determine your rankings among related websites
Usability Your site should make the content easy to find and get to. The navigation and structure should be intuitive and clearly marked.
Appearance The site’s look – or graphic interface – needs to be consistent throughout the site, and should support and reflect your existing visual identity.
Visibility Your site needs to be easy to find on major search engines. It’s important that your potential audience can find YOU when it searches the web for your kind of services or organization. There are many ways to achieve this.
TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS Websites exist in a technically involved environment. A detailed inventory of the requirements from both your side and the user’s side is required. Things to consider include: browsers, PC / Mac compatibility, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), URL structure, screen resolution and size, speed of your web connection, servers, web-hosting, domain registration, security, back-up server plan, statistical expectations, gathering and reporting, maintenance restrictions, operating systems, script language, maximum file sizes and hyperlinks.
PRODUCTION AND PROGRAMMING During the production and programming phase we mount a test site accessible only to the project team for review and feedback. During this phase and just prior to launching we test the site on PC /Mac platforms and on all the main browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
LAUNCHING Once all the programming is complete, reviewed and approved, the files are transferred to the host site. Now, you’re live and online!
A STRONG FOUNDATION Having your site up and available is the first step. Your online marketing strategy — developed during the “define and design” phases identifying your audience and how to reach it — needs ongoing attention. Using programs like Google Analytics, you will want to measure the traffic to your site and how it flows. As you assess what works and what doesn’t, you’ll need to adapt site content and your online marketing outreach accordingly.
WE’RE HERE TO HELP Working Design is ready and able to assist you with any phase of defining, designing and delivering your website, from discussing your communications strategy to getting you launched. Call us for a free consultation.
“A Short Guide to Defining, Designing and Delivering your Website” is one in an occasional series of discussion papers about communication and design from Working Design, a Vancouver, B.C.-based company. www.workingdesign.net
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