Most Websites Are Designed Backwards
January 9th, 2007 by John Herman, under internet marketing, strategy, website design. 3 Comments
Todd Follansbee of WebMarketingResources.net gives some great tips on the real steps involved in designing your website.
1. Extensive interviews. Begin the design process with an extensive client interview to understand the business, its goals and the prospective customer groups. Don’t start at the home page. Rather focus on identifying the final site objective.
2. Brainstorm a list of everything a customer would want to know to be comfortable making a purchase. It may not end up on the final site, but if selling a house for example, include everything from school details to landscape plans.
3. Information groups. Next organize this information into logical groups — utilities, town, house design, etc. These “information groups” will become pages.
4. Sales ladders. Look at the sales process, and visualize how customers proceed to the objective. Ask: When is each information group likely to arise? Sequence the information groups in a “ladder” which mimics this. Confirm with either experts or prospects. Now expand the ladder and begin organizing pages from the information groups.
5. Storyboard. No text yet, just information outlines. Start the page layout as a rough storyboard. Spend no more then 10 to 15 minutes per page and hand draw each page including spots for relevant images. Mark obvious links to other relevant groups. Insure that each page directly relates to the objective.
6. Review and test. Now review your understanding of the typical prospect. Can you make assumptions about preferred communication style, interests, motivations or focus? Which is more important: the investment value or neighborhood schools? Test your assumptions with some typical buyers or experts. We often end up building multiple sales paths based upon several customer persona groups, but for now build one path using this information. (Multiple paths are a topic for another article but are a key part of Conversion Point Architecture.)
7. Navigation. With the path architected from beginning to end; we build out the architecture or navigation map with standard site elements that users expect like About Us, FAQs etc.
8. Hire designers. Designers are called only when content is set and architectural elements are clearly laid out. Discuss the look and feel, content delivery, and explain how to place the graphics to utilize eye tracking to support key messages.
9. Build the site. Designers deliver best when provided with detailed content and site plans and can focus on visuals. With the right look and feel in place, the “beta” is tested on several prospective clients for navigational confusion, sales blocks, functional problems like browser compatibility, and finally, content problems or unanswered product questions.
10. Launch, monitor, refine. Launch the site, note your metrics. Continually monitor and refine site elements. Set conversion goals and explore new presentations and elements.
3 Comments
jherman on January 12th, 2007
A business owner needs to have an opinion first about how the information should be organized. Then when the designer comes into the picture they should be open to what the designer has to say. Two heads are better then one. The business owner’s knows how their product sells or at least has a strategy that they are trying. The information and opinions that they provide the designer are important.
Things never work when you have someone pointing to places and forcing a design to be exactly how it was in your head. Open minds are not always a small business owners strong point. They have complete control over everything else so it can be difficult to allow them to lose control for a website. The designer and the client need to listen and be open to ideas that are not necessarily their own.
todd follansbee on October 1st, 2008
Sophie, there is often confusion around the terms, developer, designer and graphic designer. I am a designer, not a developer and not a graphic designer. I am a user experience architect but I don’t write code. I describe site design, persuasive paths, architecture, behaviors etc but I don’t layout pages beyond wireframes, which I depend upon developers and graphic designers to make persuasive. We now involve the graphic designer earlier in the process then I described here but there is a huge difference between a graphic designer and a developer. No site development needs to begin before the information architecture is designed. In fact prototyping, messaging and page element design should be well along and tested before the html gurus begin their work.
I never intended to diminish the importance of graphic design, if you felt that I apologize. However Graphic designers are ALL About images, logos, look and feel which is extremely important part of a persuasive site. I am “graphically challenged” 
and am in awe of great graphic design.
True, in small sites the developer can also be the graphic designer and even design the information architect. In my experience, complex sites require careful info architecture and coordinated input from all parties. It is essential though that well designed testing accompany the process. I hope you agree with this. BTW I have developed a new free, small site, usability testing tool (quite basic but pretty helpful.) You may even use it to get new business.
John, thanks for running this.
Sophie Dennis on January 12th, 2007
“Designers are called only when content is set and architectural elements are clearly laid out.” NO! NO! NO! In my experience this approach is one of the top ways to ensure your website is a disaster, because it involves the designer - who should be the real expert here - only after all the most important decisions have been made.
This idea that designers are just about the pretty pictures is so utterly wrong headed I hardly know where to start. With the best of intentions, unless you have lots of experience yourself planning and specifying websites, then the very best thing you can do is to call in a (web) designer as early as possible. If you want to get the most from a good designer, and the benefit of their years of experience crafting websites, knowledge of what works and what doesn’t gained from tens or hundreds of sites, and understanding of in information and interaction design, you should involve them ideally at Step 1 of this process, and certainly no later than Step 5.
And for G*d’s sake never, ever hire a designer and then sit them down and “explain how to place the graphics to utilize eye tracking to support key messages”. Any good designer will run a mile if you try this teach-your-grandmother-to-suck eggs approach. It’s like sitting a surgeon down and explaining where your appendix is! Your designer already knows this stuff better than you do. It’s their job.
If they don’t, fire them and find one who does.