6 More Things in Size 6

    * Insects have 6 legs
    * 6 Points scored on a touchdown
    * The "6th sense", a term for ESP
    * 6 cardinal directions north south east west up down
    * The cells of a beehive honeycomb  are 6-sided
    * 6 degrees of separation, The human web

6 cool things that comes in size 6

6 cool things that come in size 6:
-6 Strings on a guitar
-6 Beers to a six pack
-6 Sides to a die
-6 feet in a fathom
-6 geese a laying
-6 flags on a dope amusement park

A study in Information Gathering for Web Designers

Needed Information To Create a Website For a Client

An online presence is quickly becoming a necessity of any successful business. The first step a business typically makes to create their online presence is to contact a web designer and get an estimate.   Some businesses have a general idea of what they want, others will submit a request for proposal (RFP). In most cases, neither gives the web designer enough information to generate an accurate proposal. The web designers job apart from producing the actual work is to help guide the client throughout the process collecting the necessary information in order to produce a website that accurately portrays the businesses message and corporate identity.

What the client wants… Discovery

One of the first steps in creating a website is for the web designer to engage in a data collection process that can be called the discovery phase to gather the information of a client’s particular needs.  The main purpose of the discovery phase is to figure out and define the scope of the project from the client including it’s characteristics and/ or needs of it’s intended users.  Web designers typically gather a client’s particular needs via either a face-to-face meeting, over the phone or often through an online or offline questionnaire.  When face-to-face meetings are not possible some technological alternatives exist that can help facilitate the interaction that face-to-face meetings provide such as GotoMeeting and Mega Meeting.  These services provide platforms for collaborating and sharing computer screens so that the web designer and client can discuss their projects by visiting websites together and looking over and discussing materials visually.  Questionnaires are preferable to web designers as they provide a document that becomes a main part of the design process that they can refer back to. These questionnaires can be online as a fillable form on their website as well as made to be a pdf document that can be emailed as well as hosted on a website.

What the client has… Collecting the data

The second phase is to collect all existing graphics and content the client will want to use in the website as well any logistical and/or product information pertinent to the website.  This process can be daunting for some web designers in that many clients send information in a variety of formats with little or no instructions or explanations.  Information is often sent via email, faxes and phone calls with pieces of information dictated verbally.  It is preferable to request from the client to list all materials via email first.  Having a client write a clear email will give them time to think about their ideas and what they want to say.  Cloud services can be of beneficial use in that some pieces of data that needs to be collected can be too large in file size and cannot be emailed. 

What the client needs…. Data Analysis and competitor research

Once the web designer has asked all the questions, gathered all important information and media, market analysis and competitor research can be done.  This is a phase where the web designer often sends information back to the client. Because competition online is very high, websites created for clients will be compared to a lot of other sites, the website must be memorable and stand out from the crowd.  Web searches are used in order to gather a list of competitor websites and the web designer begins to sketch out and conceptualize the site.  Keywords for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are researched and suggested to the client.  Key components of these competitor websites are then broken down to their functions and compared to the proposed websites key features.

Conclusion…. Putting it all together

Web designers collect and produce a large amount of information and media in various different formats in order to produce successful and client pleasing websites.  Technology is a vital part of this process and using it properly to the web designer’s benefit can make the difference between a profitable and efficient project or an unorganized and unprofitable project.