This stage is all about asking questions and gathering answers. We want to cast the net wide, get as much info as we can and then organize all that info into the web site. Here are the main questions I ask (I’ll go into more detail on each below):
- What goes on the site (and where does it go)?
- How will people find the site?
- Where will we grow?
- What do we need?
What goes on the site (and where does it go)?
The road to getting this answer is pretty easy. I run through a short list of questions and see where they take me:
- Why does your organization need this web site?
- Why do your visitors need this web site?
- Who are your competitors?
- What web sites do you like?
If this is a redesign of an existing web site, I also ask:
- What works on the site now?
- What doesn’t work on the site now?
The point of these questions is to find out the goal of the web site (why the organization needs it combined with why visitors need it), who the visitors will be, and what should be included in the web site. Incidentally, this is one of my favorite parts of the whole process because I get to learn as much as I can about a business I often know little about.
Web Site Audits
Any time a client mentions a web site, I take a look at it. If it’s important (the client’s current site or a big competitor’s site) I’ll jot down a quick web site audit. I take a look at the following areas and note the good and bad in each:
- Usability
- Findability
- Download Time
- Scalability
How will people find the site?
Once I have a handle on what’s going on the site, what the site needs to accomplish and who’s going to visit the site, I look into how people will find the site. Ah, you think, Search Engine Optimization (SEO for those fans of acronyms out there). Well, yes, that and more.
I remind the client to put their web site address on every piece of marketing material they have: letterheads, business cards, email signatures. And ask the client how they think people will find the site? From that answer I can gauge how important Search Engine Optimization is for this site.
Search Engine Optimization
Usually, I make a little side trip at this point and explain what I mean by Search Engine Optimization. The basic idea isn’t very complicated. There are lots of people out there using internet search engines to find what they are looking for. Basically, the search engines work like a huge text database of the pages that they index. When someone types in some search terms, the search engine examines their database and gives back pages that represent those search terms.
How do they know what pages represent the search terms? They look at the text on the page and see how many times the terms appear, where the terms appear (page title, in headers) and usually add in some arcane formula to try and evaluate how ‘good’ the page is. Having lots of links to the page may weigh into this, being part of a popular site may also weigh in. You can read as much as you’d like about Search Engine Optimization on pages like the Search Engine Optimization article on Wikipedia.
While we may not be able to control how ‘good’ Google thinks our site is, we can control the text on our pages and while we’re writing our text we need to weight the user’s needs with the search terms we want to target. Now’s the time to brainstorm a bit and come up with search terms we want to target (how to do this is a bit beyond the scope of this article, so check out this one: Search Engine Optimization Basics: Part 1 – Keywords)
Where Will We Grow?
Before we start to code a single page, we need to think about how this site will grow in the future. The idea is to make sure we’ll be able to scale the site easily as it grows. Now’s the time to brainstorm everything that could possibly go onto the site and put that in the organization.
Also consider:
- Who will be updating the site?
- How much web design experience do they have?
- Will they require training?
The answers to these questions help me decide how to code the actual pages later on.
What Do We Need?
Finally ask these questions:
- Does all the information for the web site already exist somewhere (perhaps on the old site) or will it have to be written and approved?
- Do we need software for different elements, like forums or a content management system?
- What about photos or illustrations?
Just by asking the questions, I get the client thinking about what they need to do and I can make sure my estimate is as accurate as possible.
Final Products
So, what comes out of this phase? The road maps for the entire project.
Web Site Organization Diagram
This diagram shows roughly what pages will be in the web site and what information goes on those pages. This is the diagram that is the base of all the work to come.
Proposal
The proposal includes a cost estimate, overview of the web site that will be delivered, requirements and schedule. I refer back to this throughout the project.
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