Hi,
In Lecture 2 of Marketing for the Web, Sally taught us a basic fundamental of what you need to use before you even start mocking up designs or even jumping straight into the code because that’s a big ‘no, no’ not just in Marketing for the Web but when you building a website for a client or even a website for a mate. You can’t just judge what the client wants by a past website or maybe a ten second chat. You have to feel the passion ousing out of them with idea because in the end you are getting paid by him and if you have put your money and hard work into building a website without asking him first and he says no, its not the client in the wrong its the web designer for jumping this discovery phase.
Stage 1 – Interface Design : Normally a Web Designer is never satisfied with his work and can always think of maybe a part in his website where he maybe could do better and improves it. Now though most web designers who work in a company have a specially bond with these graphic designers and artists to create more of a ‘painting’ if i must say because that’s all a website is one big image, with interactive part added to get the best user experience. But these artists can inspire the front end of a website, while the web designer can develop a framework and integrate interactive parts to it.
Stage 2 – Knowing your Audience : We do this by using a scheme called Persona, These are basically interviews with a fictional person to see what they want out of the website and they also indicate what are your target users. The way you make these fictional people up is by looking at the old website and company structure, what does the company give?, what type of customers visit this website and the way you get information for each persona is
- Contextual Interviews
- Individual Interviews
- Usability Testing
- Small Focus Groups
Stage 3 – Descriptive Words : Words??? People think you can stuff any old words into a website and it makes it successful, but what does make it successful is descriptive words. These descriptive words can lighten up the mood of you website because in the end ‘Content is King’ and with a company website you’ll be wanting the website to describe what you do as a business and the best way to get that over is by the content, if the user reads a couple of lines and drifts off the website design would be classed as a failure and there web designer will be shot in the foot. So getting descriptive word is all about the research into the company and you can do this by speaking to staff, looking at leaflets, speaking to customers etc.
Stage 4 – Colour : Dull, boring, lack of enthusiasm. These are just some words describing some colour palettes you see in websites today. This is a touchy subject with the client because its there business and they probably picked the colour pallet so it speaks words with there style, but you have to make sure that the mood of the website is bright and puts a smile on your face.
Stage 5 -Style Approach : This is all about how you see something when it is put in front of you. What vibe do you want to be sending out when dealing with the pictures of the website. Do you want customers to feel to priced out at what the company has to offer.
Stage 6 -Mood Boards : I’ve done loads of these but still i don’t know how to do them properly, there abit like the style approach in ways that you have to fit the right pictures with the right mood you want to portray. For example if your a professional business that deals with cars, you don’t want to be advertising all the pricey cars on the front page because the user is going to look at the front page and say ‘ these are too much for me’ then go onto a different website. You have to create that balance where you can still offer the high priced cars but make sure you mix the cars around abit or have different areas of the website and you can create different mood boards for that part of the site.
Thanks
Ross Barnett Web Designer 