Would you spend $1 million on a house and just tell the architect to figure it out along the way? Probably not. Just as a house requires a plan (blue print) so does a website. Failure to plan out a site can lead to huge issues when the design phase occurs, regardless if it’s a small website or a large multilayer website.
Organization is Key.
Enough said. How a visitor uses your site and navigates throughout it is the most important factor to consider. The goal is to get the viewer to reach the content that they are seeking in the fewest amount of clicks possible. This allows for the site to be user-friendly and offers no areas of confusion that would frustrate the visitor who would probably end up leaving your site.
When beginning this first stage, pick up a piece of paper and a pencil and begin to draw a sitemap of the navigation. Determine any necessary drop-down categories and any corresponding pages. Do any pages relate to each other? Can information be combined on one page instead of having several lesser important pages? What pages are the most important and should receive more prominence? These are all great questions to consider when determining the navigation and hierarchy. When creating your sitemap, pay close attention to the organization as there should be no pages buried within your website.
Some of this process will be very easy, as an example, the “contact” page should be a very prominent page, as this is the main page that someone will contact you on. After the navigation of the website is completed, it’s time to think about content.
Content is More than Text.
The website content is often times referred to as the text of a website. While the text is by far one of the most key elements of a website, content includes much more…
– Imagery
– Videos
– Documents (pdfs)
– Audio
– Social Media
– Animations
– Interactions
– And more…
One important element to bring up is content quality. If you want your website to maintain a high level of sophistication make sure that your imagery and text sends that message. The text of your website will not only shape your website but it also has a huge influence on the visitor’s perception. If there are typos and mistakes, the visitor will probably think that your business will reflect that. When writing text for your site, write it, come back to it, edit, and show it to someone else before beginning the editing process all over again. Put the time in to make sure that your text is polished and perfect. Text is not the only element that should represent a high quality, photography should also represent the same level of quality as “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Furthermore, by fully planning your site, it eliminates any areas that need to be questioned. It also reduces the amount of time that you have to spend going back and forth with the designer, which in return, saves you money. Fully planning also helps to reduce any missed deadlines due to lack of organization or information not being present at the beginning of the project.
Is your company in need of a new website or a website update? Contact us today to learn more about the web design services that we offer.
R2F Creative LLC provides graphic design + branding and web design solutions for clients nationwide and locally in Ankeny and Des Moines, Iowa.
