Website Planning

There are many factors that contribute to completing the construction of a site. Initial planning, communication of goals, intent, and ideas, ongoing communication of project status, and providing content to the designers all make it possible to get a web project done in a timely manner.

Initial Planning
This most important phase can save a lot of time and headaches. It is imperative that time be spent on mapping out deadlines, the scope of the content, and what resources will be needed by both the client and the designer.

There are many sorts of deadlines that are involved in the creation of a web site. When will the site be published in a magazine, brochure, newspaper, television ad? What other clients might the designer have in line to begin work on? When will a new product line be rolled out? When are business cards being printed?

Some sites have a few pages of content to put online. Others have hundreds. Others have a few static pages but also need 200 products put online. Is the product information going to come out of a database? Is the client going to enter the content via a template? Where are the product photos going to come from?

Knowing what resources are needed and which are readily available ahead of time will make things easier. If the client is willing and able to take photos for the web site, this can save time and money. Clip art, typography, and stock photography may need to be ordered. The people at the client's workplace may be a resource. Interviews, product or service descriptions, employee photos, client testimonials, etc., all may be required at some point in the process.

Communication of Goals, Intent, and Ideas
The goal of a web site is to communicate. It must convince people of something, move them to action, encourage them to partake of an organization's services or products. It is a projection of the client's ethics, reputation, and capabilities. It must get the job done, whether it's processing sales orders, or displaying the status of an order of steel. Important questions are, "Who is our audience?" "What do we want them to feel or experience?" Determine up front what the benchmarks of the site will be. They might be, "Number of toys sold," "Page views," or "People registered to receive further information."

Providing Content
The client always provides some content to the designer, even if it's as brief as, "Go forth to Bosnia and make a web site covering that war." Usually, the client has documents, photos, and other content that it wants online. This content is the "raw ingredients" that will be processed by the designer and eventually rendered online in a browser. When the content doesn't flow to the designer, work cannot be done, and progress is stalled. If the deadline for completion of the site is dependent on the client providing the content, the site may not be finished as originally scheduled. Additionally, the content a client provides can be in different forms, some of which aid the designer a great deal. For instance, a photograph print needs to be scanned, retouched, and perhaps masked. Photos from digital cameras save time. Photos of objects that need to appear singly on the page, "masked out", should be shot against a contrasting background. The concept is analogous to the "blue screening" movie makers use. Textual content nowadays often originates in a digital form. Instead of printing out that word processing document, email it to your designer. That saves typing and reformatting time.

Ongoing Communication
Keeping communication lines open is essential. The client needs to evaluate work at several points in the design phase. If another direction needs to be taken, that needs to be made known as soon as possible. Communication will let everyone know where the project stands, how well it's moving forward to completion.