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4
Tips For
Working With A Design Team
Start the web
development process effectively by defining key issues upfront
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1. |
Define the purpose
of your site and how you intend to measure it's
success.
Defining the purpose
of the site may seem irrelavant to some but if it is clearly
defined for everyone in the development team it becomes
the guiding force in making your website a success.
For the design team it becomes the mantra through which they
determine the structure and user experience for your
site.
Defining the ways you intend to
measure the success of the site will help to
guide the design team as it makes interface and navigation
decisions.Some clients want
their website to achieve numerous objectives such as: high
impression rates, qualified lead generation, product/company
branding and or sales. Numerous objectives can be achieved by
a website but by clearly defining and prioritizing these
objectives upfront you will be giving your design team the
information they need to organize and emphasize the most
important elements of each screen.
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2. |
Define your target audience and what
their greatest needs are.
Knowing the audience
you intend to reach gives you the ability to tailor
your offerings to their needs. With this information your
design team can create a personality through the use of
color palettes, typfaces and a style that your audience will
identify with. Getting your audience to identify with your
site is a key to insure return visits.
Catering to your
audience's greatest needs will create a loyal
audience. When I visit a website that shows a clear
understanding of my needs and appears to talk to my
generation, I become an avid user and promoter of the site.
Understanding the needs and culture of your audience is
possible through research and hiring like minded individuals.
Making this a requirment of your site will set your site apart
from your competition.
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| 3. |
Define
how your content or service will be unique on the
web.
Providing unique content
or services is a key differentiator for any business.
Uniqueness can be achieved by either doing what you do better
than your competition or by offering something that no one
else is offering on the web. In either case, this offering
will be your greatest strength and your design team can make
sure that this strength is very clear to your
users.
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| 4. |
Determine your launch date
and how much you intend to spend on
design.
Developing a timeline
which includes deliverables and review dates is key
to a successful launch. Typically I like to work with a
timeline that includes 5 phases. Each phase has a set of
deliverables and review dates.
1. Information
Gathering: Getting and confirming answers to the above
four questions.
2. Schematic Building:
Creating and signing off on a top level schematic that
defines how a typical user will enter the site, navigate
across top level content and drill down for more indepth
content or services.
3. Information Zoning:
Includes defining the number of unique templates
that your site will need, a successful navigation
system and how your content/services will be positioned on each
screen.
4. Design: Includes a series of mockups
that communicate your purpose, a style that your audience can
identify with and a layout that emphasizes your site's
greatest strengths.
5. Production: Includes
final graphics and html that match the finalized designs and
test successfully across platforms and browsers.
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