Help me, I’m new!
If you are new to web site design and not sure where to start, this small friendly support page is for you. First of all, don’t panic.
1. Website design starts with website planning. In most cases, it’s enough to realize what you actually need the website for, who’s your target audience and what you expect from your website.
2. Think as a customer. Check the web sites of your closest competitors and write down things that you like and you don’t. Make a list of features you would like to have on your website.
3. Flash or HTML? This is a hard solution to make but there are several tips to help you. If most of the answers are yes, then HTML is your choice. If you are looking for a photo portfolio or night club website you can skip this step, flash is cool :)
- It’s a business, corporate, lawyer, scientific, educational website
- Text content is most important, I don’t care how flashy the website is
- I need high exposure in the search engines
- I have hips of information and need lots of space on page and lots of pages
4. Website design style. There are lots of approaches and techniques and if you like some website, send us a link as an example. If you are not sure what would look best, thrust over designer to choose the style and color scheme for you.
5. Menu and links. Write down what pages you need and make a final variant of the menu. Sometimes it makes sense to combine several pages into one, this helps to keep the development cost down, combine all the useful info in one place and get higher positions in the search engines.
6. Page structure and layout. Think of the information you would like to place on the pages, divide it into text blocks, image blocks, tables etc. We have to make the design not only attractive but readable as well. You can start with the home page only and keep working on the other pages while we design.
7. That’s it. Contact us and we’ll take it from there, or you can contact us even earlier! You may use the questionnaire below as a guide for an informative quote request and we’ll discuss the details later on.
Questionnaire
1) Please provide some info about your business and area of expertise.
2) What's the purpose of building the website? What features you'd like to have on your web site? You can point us to some website with functionality needed.
3) Would you like to have the website in flash or HTML?
4) How many pages you plan to have on the site? What sections you plan to place on the site?
5) Do you have a logo or need one designed?
6) Please show us some websites you like in terms of look and feel if any.
7) Please show us your website competitors.
8) What is the suggested budget for the project?
