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.
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