Where to begin building your website – answer these three questions first
When creating a website, I often get asked, where should I start? Everyone has an answer; some say they start coding, others open Photoshop and those with a bit more patients will proclaim that wire-framing is the first step. Information Architects and User-Experience Designers will all have different answers as well – however, I feel as though regardless of who you are, what you specialize in and what step in the ladder you happen to fall, the answer should be the same.
I’ll keep this short and simple. Every web project should begin with answering these three questions:
- What does the user expect?
- What does the user want?
- What do you want the user to want?
Before you sketch anything, design anything or even code a single line take a step back and think about these three questions and their answer – these will be the most important part of your project. Everything you need to know about the content, the design, the structure and architecture can be found within. You want to ensure you are meeting your audiences’ expectations and desires – ensuring disappointment and confusion are not apart of your experience. At the same time you want to ensure your objectives are being met and are front-and-center in the users’ experience. It is the balance between your wants and the users wants that each project will need to evaluate independently – but there should be a balance and when in doubt always give the user the benefit of the doubt.
- November 21st, 2006
- 17comments
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Yeah I would say that typically you should have a requirements document that is signed off on by the client.
This can save your rear at the end when the clients scope creeps to the borders of your sanity.
If its not on the initial requirements document, you are not responsible to do it unless you negotiate a new price, or submit a new work order.
This helps in asking for more money, which is always difficult for me to do. Before I started using full req. documents I was always doing work for free, which is kind, but your usually helping someone else make money.
A requirements document is always a nice thing to have — don’t always get the luxury of having one, but definitely helpful.
Before the requirements document is even written though, these questions should be asked and answered. You want to have the answers to these questions on hand and top-of-mind while doing anything for the project — it is your base foundation, your mission statement of sorts. Everything your are attempting to do is in pursuit of your objectives and the users expectations and desires.
you say building your site.
I’m all about what the user wants, but before #1 I’d add.
A. Why do you want to build a website?
Then 4. Is 1-3 copatible with A?
Too many people want to build a website cuz they think they should have one, their friends have them, or they want to extend their current business model into the web. Often, I say “spend the money on a nice business card.”
Really, they should be asking does the world need another shitty website that no one will go to?
I ask questions around providing true value at multiple points.
“If no one finds your site, how can you offer value?” (photo albums for familysite, central graphics or marketing repository, versioning, etc…
(even just having a logo and telephone number so people can find you on the internet is a fair answer)
then I keep expanding the circle, trying to find true value at each point.
I’m not knockin the user req - it drives most everything, but there needs to be an inital compatability check to see if the reasons for creating a site are in line with likely outcomes or use patterns.
Not building a website is a perfectly acceptable answer to me.
Devo, you definitely make a solid point.
I guess I am going about this from a selected mind-set — as a freelancer and corporate designer. I can pick my projects, pick my clients but I can’t pick my clients projects. I am not typically in a position to determine what the project is — only how to build, shape, implement, and ultimately create the project.
You are correct, ensuring the project is even worth doing should probably be number 1, but I’ve kind of assumed that as a given. My three questions are once there is a project to begin — deciding to start a project is another topic in itself.
if someone wants a website I would not talk them out of it because there are already too many sites out there.
this is a way that I make a living. if someone wants something and has the money to buy it, give it to them or someone else will.
I wouldn’t bother trying to talk them out of it, but unless they were willing to address these sorts of questions I would be unlikely to involve myself in the project, either.
There’s plenty of bad ideas, poorly executed out there. I try not to associate myself with any more of them than I have to.
I’m a distinct amateur at building websites, though I’ve had my own for about 7 years now. For me it was necessary. I’m an artist, and it sells my work. Simple as that. Could it be better? Of course, but I don’t have the time to learn to do it, or the money to hire you guys.
I’d disagree Dennis. If your sites’ purpose is to sell your “artistic” work — then wouldn’t it seem logical that a more artistic website might enhance the quality of your work showcased? The site should reflect your artistic style — even it it isn’t designed by you.
Lets say your average work of art sells for $250.00 and you pay a web designer $1000 to build your site to the caliber of artistic style and professionalism as your work and that increases sales by only one a year. In four years you make your money back — but with each transaction and page view, you given value and context to your work. The site is an extension of you, in your case, your brand.
Look at a redesign as an investment — not a straight cost.
I’ll get you down to two questions:
1) What am I trying to accomplish?
2) How exactly am I going to do that?
In my experience, any website owner that hasn’t adequately addressed those two questions is almost sure to see their project fail.
And before anyone says “what about the user”, well, 99 times out of 100, you’re going to have to address their needs and expectations to adequately answer the second one.
Where people run into trouble is with poorly thought out answers like (1)Make lots of money and (2)Put up adwords
So no matter how the questions are framed, the moral is, you gotta think about this stuff.
Oh, I agree, but I still don’t have the money to pay someone , or the time to learn more about building websites. catch 22.
Thank you for this. It’s perfect advice that could have saved the poor designer I’m working with the trouble of tearing her hair out. Now in fairness, the site is built around one project that wasn’t finished when the site began, but still we would have done better.
Pamela, thanks for the comment — I am glad the article has proved useful! Good luck on your project.
My developer thanks you too. We need to remember there are a lot of areas where we need to learn to communicate with those who have a different view of the world. When talking technology is like speaking Chinese a translator helps. I always like to read the tech articles, that help me get the concepts, even though I can’t add a HTML tag without a button.
is there any business in the world that would not benefit from online presence?
and if so what would qualifiy them to this club of non-benefiters?
Yeah! The local bodega of a low income neighborhood (or third world country) would not benefit from an online presence. Would it be cool if someone could log onto the site and check out the site and know exactly what is and is not in stock — absolutely! But the cost of such an operation would out way the return.
Also, the average customer would not have constant and instant access to the internet to utilize something as simple as seeing operation times. The way the average customer in that situation would interact with this establish would differ from how you and I might.
The cost of a website (creating, maintaining, etc) — still isn’t always worth it in all situations. There is an enormous digital divide throughout the world.
I always want to have good website which is about pc games reviews, news, cheats etc. but when I thinking about how much time I need to spend on writting of centent I stop to thinking about that. I allready have some of content and other improtant stuff for website but I allways need to write fresh staff. I would like that I can find someone who is also interesting in this kind of work and who can help me in this but it is very hard and it is not secure. I have great knowladge about design, seo etc. but without someone else you can’t do anything.
theIMPOSS1BLE, if I think their idea will fail, I certainly will send them somewhere else to do it. Client selection is huge, no one looks in the yellow pages to build a 20K website. Somebody will always do if for less-let them. I’ll even offer free reviews of RFPs, but I don’t submit one. Great clients have friends.
What I was talking about was when they say “l want this” I usually say “No you don’t, you want this”. To which they say,” Yeah, that’s what I want, can you do that?”
They know their business, not me, but I try refine their goals or to look for opportunities that they often don’t think of (customer service cost reduction, a profitable new way to parse their content, back-office efficiencies, etc). My experience is that clients appreciate it, competitors often just send a proposal, and its a big reason we very rarely don’t land a proposal.
“This can save your rear at the end when the clients scope creeps to the borders of your sanity.“
creep still kills me.