Design: How to design a website 01

How to design a website

1. Research
1. Research to understand the client needs - Target audience, goals, creative direction, budget, deadline 
2. Industry or market research - research other websites, research with focus groups,
2. Brainstorming
1. Through out all your ideas
1. Overall concepts and styles
2. Layouts
3. Color schemes
4. Images
5. Typeface options
6. Project goals
7. Ideas related to the mood or emotional feel of the work
2. Who to brainstorm with
1. Other designers and creative professionals
2. Co-workers
3. The client
4. People in an industry related to the project
5. Family
6. Friends
3. Content of the website - such as news website vs photography portfolio
3. Decide on Technical requirement 
1. What software is used and what makes the site 'work' include:
1. Basic HTML: Quick to develop but little flexibility and outgoing maintenance
2. Content Management System: Designer control the overall design, look and allows client to perform regular content updates. (www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com)
3. Flash: Easy to put the layout but complex and time consuming to develop
4. Write an outline
1. Details of what features would be on the site, user accounts, commenting, social networking function, video, newsletter sign-up 
2. Methods of building a website
3. Hosting plan
4. Time frame
5. Maintenance - Price for ongoing work, 
6. Present the outline to the client to be approved - add, remove or adjust any feature to help the budget and time frame
7. Going to contract - Cancellation fees for the Hosting & minimum charge
5. Create Wireframes
1. Simple line drawings of website layout without color and type
2. What content deserve most focus and percentage of space on page
6. Design the website
1. Initial design after client approval of wireframes 
2. Consistent navigation to find all main content areas
3. Before actual content Lorem Ipsum 
7. Build web pages
1. Web designer and web developer jobs start here. 
2. Developer will be involved in the design to make sure design is realistic & effective layout, features are possible to execute on the website
8. Develop the website
1. After layout completed in HTML & CSS - integrate it with the system you have chosen to build the website. 
2. Developing templates to be read by a content management system For example: www.wordpress.com
9. Promote the website
1. Drive the traffic to the website
2. Optimizing for search engine
3. Sending newsletter
4. Advertising with Google or with banner ads
5. Print method
6. Mouth to mouth
10. Keep it fresh
1. Post new content - videos, music, photos, newsletter, whatever the site was built to present