SM2 | technology | creative | strategy. Web development. Web design. Joomla! Brisbane Australia

Your boss has come in and asked you to design a great big new web site. Yikes, what do you do? Where do you start?

Many companies start their web project with contacting a web or graphic designer like SM2. This is probably not the best way to go about it, it’s like going to a car broker and asking for a car with no specifics on seats you need, budgets, do you need a ute? A van? As it is basically asking your web firm how long is a ball of string? You will need to define it and lock in exactly what you are looking for before you get to picking up a phone, emailing, getting recommendations or trawling through Google to find a web firm.

Whether you're looking to get a online presence for the first time, or looking for a redesign of your existing site, below are a series of questions that you should consider before you are ready to actually approach a firm to develop your website. This information is also useful for a revamp, or review of your current site too.

The first step you should start with is discovery, which is effectively figuring out what you're doing on your web site and who you're doing it for.  Here are some questions to ask yourself, your marketing department or any essential stakeholders before you start a project. These questions should be answered in the first part of the discovery phase of designing your site:

1. What are your business objectives? 

"I want a really cool site" is fun, but usually not a good business objective or may even be relevant to your target audience. Instead, you should be looking to things that relate to revenue, attracting new customers, serving existing customers and clients, reducing costs, such as saving administration or call centre costs that are achieved through new efficiencies online.  You may need a "really cool site" to attract new customers or entice clients to use your online services - but start with the basics first.

2. Who are the users?

Who visits your web site and why? This is another really important thing to know.  At SM2, we have many different kinds of visitors to our sites: current clients, new and prospective clients, career seekers, our competitors, developers , designers, Australian and worldwide users, search engine robots, journalists, media, etc. The needs and browsing behaviours are different for current clients versus prospective clients. Fortunately, all humans have certain characteristics in common so we can have certain principles be true across all of our pages. And certain areas of our web site are devoted to specific audiences (such as the support area and the Custom Joomla! Development area or our portfolio).   It's important to think about the design of the site in their terms and not your terms.

3. What are the users' goals, tasks and missions?

Last year we did an inventory of all of the important kinds of things customers do on the SM2 web sites and were discovered there were about 5 really important user tasks.  We worked from this list short scenarios that describe a specific customer and the mission they're on at SM2.com.au. This is what we use when we're checking out new site navigation ideas or doing major site revamps.

4. Who are the buyers and do they use the site?

Sometimes you'll find that you are designing for individual users, but are losing sight of what's actually making the buying decisions. The buyers at your site are as important as the end users (and vice-versa). It's easy to get wrapped up in designing just for buyers and decision makers or just for end users, but neither will get you an effective site. You need to design for both, and for the whole of the buying and ownership process, no matter how simple or complex it may be.

5. What's critical for you, the customers and users? 

At SM2, we identified critical factors which are the very top requirements that customers have for the web site. Good critical factors have associated measures, so also understand how you're going to measure success for your customers' top requirements.  The bottom line is that before you start a big new web site you need to understand the key requirements of your customers and business.

6. What existing discovery work has already been done?

If you're organised you may have a lot of data already around user segments, user goals, business objectives, etc.  Even if you only have partial information, do yourself a favour and accumulate it all in one place so you have a beginning research backgrounder for your web firm.

7. Where are the resources coming from?

This is a mundane question, but an important one. You need to know before you start not only who is footing the bill for creating the design and doing the build, but also whether there is adequate budget to maintaining the site after you launch.

And finally, The Strategic Brief

Once you have gathered and considered all of the above information, you may want to move on the next phase, Strategic Brief. The Strategic Brief is a great document to give to firms you tender or approach who may work on your project. The Brief defines what we are doing with the project and why.

It should include:

• Current situation overview
• Business objectives
• Audiences
• Customer objectives
• Scope & deliverables
• Constraints & touch points
• Research and background docs available to the project

If you have done all of this, you'll be in good shape to start your web project.  And notice we haven't even started talking what colours and fonts and the size of your logo!

Why not contact SM2 to get your project off the ground?