In this opportunity I would like to talk about the requirements gathering phase of designing and developing professional websites. As I’ve mentioned on my previous article, this will be the very first step that we need to do before we even start designing, coding etc.
First of all, as part of this article: DOWNLOAD Business Requirements Document Template FOR FREE!
Remember, without defining a clear goal and purpose for our professional web site, we will end up getting confused and stopping mid-way through.
What’s in It?
1. Goal and purpose of the website
During requirements gathering phase we need to define the goal and purpose of the website. For example, the website will be informational only. It won’t have the capability of visitor to signup or login.
Another example: The website will be a community website where a visitor can register and interact with the other members. He will have a profile of himself and able to upload an image, etc etc etc.
After we determine the purpose and the goal of the website, the picture will get clearer. We can start picturing what will be on our website.
Be as precise as it can be! Ask your client what they want on their website. You – as a professional website designer and developer – needs to also have some knowledge in this area. Go to various websites that are popular nowadays such as community websites (Facebook, Twitter, etc), news sites, etc. This way you can offer clients various functionalities.
Remember, that’s where the money is. The more functionalities you can offer, the more money you can make out of it.
2. Selecting the title and domain name
The next step will be for us to determine what the title and domain name of the website will be. Normally the domain name will mimic the title. For example, if the title of the website is “Tom’s Mowing” then the domain name will normally be http://www.tomsmowing.com/ or something like that.
However, from SEO (search engine optimisation) perspective, a more friendly domain name may also be selected. For example: http://www.professionalmowing.com/.
Please ask your client what the domain name will be and what the TLD he wants. TLD is the extension at the end of the domain (eg. .com, .net, .com.au, etc). Also, let your client know that the domain he wants may not be available.
Bring a laptop that has wireless/mobile internet as you can perform a quick domain search during meeting.
3. Creation of the website structure
This is the important bit. When you first publish the website, it should have some content, shouldn’t it? It’s less likely that someone publishes a website without any content. The basic content that I normally instruct client to develop is the site structure.
Website structure is normally visualised in a tree-view form. For example:
– About Us
—- History
——– 1970
– Products
– Services
—- Hosting service
—- Repair service
—- Eye test
– Contact Us
etc
It doesn’t matter if you have “Under construction, please come back later” message on every page but at least – from visitors point of view – they can see what’s coming.
Get your client to submit to you the basic site structure. If they want to be able to add more later then it’s a further matter. Without this, it will be very-very hard to design the professional website later on. As we go along hopefully you’ll start realising that all these will tie together.
4. Creation of the website layout
Normally I will create two layouts: Homepage layout and Content page layout.
What is layout anyway? Layout is the positioning of the website elements. Together with site structure, this will ease your way through when designing the website later on. Example of a layout is below:
Homepage layout
Content page layout
News page layout
Remember, these are only page layouts and no more. They only tell us where to position things!
We are not yet determining the design of each element (eg. color of links, shape of left navigation control, banner with gradient colours, etc).
5. Selecting colour theme based on client corporate branding
Now, this is normally the last step during this process. Ask client for their corporate branding (eg. logo) because a website is really an another realisation of client’s corporate branding, hence colours have to match!
It also makes your life easier as well when you know what colour the website you’re designing will be.
Conclusion
So, last but not least, this is really one of the most important steps in a professional website creation process. By skipping this phase we’ll end-up getting confused of what we want with the website.
I’ve been there, I’ve done that,
Tommy
