Think Smart Solutions

To me web design is a combination of form and function. Technology today has allowed for us to create dynamic and responsive websites. I have recently entered the web design field because I had discovered that many web designers do not create functional websites. Many web designers lacked the ability to create truly meaningful websites. While having an attractive website is great but if it doesn’t serve a purpose then search engines won’t find it.

While I lack the artistic talents to make very colorful websites I do possess a good eye and I’m able to best capture what a business will need. Now my methodology for website design can be broken down into four phases:

• concept
• design
• development
• implementation

The concept phase is one in which you work with your client to develop the concept of the website. You begin by discussing color scheme and layout options. The color scheme is very important and must be done in concert with logo design. A good business logo can go a long way in helping you to be remembered by clients. When developing the concept of a website I find that its best to start with a pencil, paper and T-ruler. This is so that I can design the layout of the boxes. While some might believe that they maybe able to better prototype in Adobe Photoshop I find it difficult to prototype websites on systems because of the hacks you have to develop to support multiple browsers. Also you will decide in this phase what kind of meta tag information is important for your website to contain. Meta tag information is information that is not visible to the website user but can be picked up by search engines. Every page should have a unique description and keywords meta tag unless you have hundreds of pages. Then a few pages that have a unique description would be sufficient.

The design phase is when you start creating the layout and structure of the website. You can’t concerned with functionality at this point. That should have been resolved in the concept phase. Your time will be divided between making sure your site looks the same in multiple browsers. Also this is the phase in which your client will be able to better direct as to what to add and what to remove. You can also decided on what different colors and placement of the company logo. Make sure that you logo colors match the website colors as this will enforce branding. Logo design is outside of the scope of this blog but should be considered first on any new or existing business’s list of things to do. During this phase you can develop the look and feel of forms that will be used on the site but don’t worry about the code. You won’t be able to test functionality of the forms until you unload the website to the Internet.

The development phase is where you begin to test the functionality of code that you added to the website. This could be Javascript that you used to make fancy drop down menus or a form validation script. Their are many things you can add to website to extend the functionality. Forms are very important as to many people may not be at their computer to send you a message. It allows anybody connected to your website to send you a message. It also serves to keep your website hidden from spyders. These are the spiders that have 8 legs and make webs. These are nasty pieces of code that rip identifying information for the hope of spamming. While many scripts for form processing are free their support is not. If you are having difficultly its up to you to find out the problem with your code. This can account for hours of troubleshooting. Since you probably won’t have direct access to your web server you might need to load a dummy server on your development computer so you can debug your code. I haven’t done this yet because the code is usually very simple to implement. Also it could be your hosting company not allowing you to run certain types of scripts.

The implementation phase is the final stage in which you post the content of the website. Most problems should have been resolved before reaching this phase. Content should be checked for errors and functionality bugs should have been worked out. This is not feasible for small websites. It might just be easier to upload the website and worry about the development phase during the implementation phase. Putting up the website allows client to see the finished product and work out any bugs that crept into the final draft. If you follow the design process getting sign off at the end of each phase you should have less problems and re-work to do as the client would have agreed to the implementation of the website. This will also give clients a clear expectation of the website.

Now having a structured process for web development allows for your client to track the progress of their website. It gives them milestones in which they can objectively determine the success or failure of the website. Breaking the process into logical groups allows you to focus on the success of each milestone instead of the entire project. Web development is a big process that should be broken down so that you can deal with them easily. Any professional web developer should have a process in which you can observe the progress of the website. Now that doesn’t mean their process will mirror my own. The process maybe longer or shorter depending on what works for that particular developer. I have had the opportunity to engage in challenging and engaging projects. To retain my services for interesting web development projects use the contact form and we can discuss the pricing.