Web Design Checklist

 The only way to ensure that a Web design company or freelancer can meet your needs is to be clear exactly what your needs are before you hire. As obvious as this sounds, many Web design customers only have a general idea what they want their website to look like or accomplish. Often, key elements are overlooked or are not well communicated to the designer, resulting in time-consuming, and often costly, changes, or perhaps even an entire redesign.

To avoid the delay, expense, and frustration of changing or redesigning your website, we’ve created a Web Design Checklist  to help you think through your needs and wants before you hire a Web designer. Completing this checklist will ensure that you consider the full scope of your website – not just its audience and content, but also its features, layout, and even its color scheme.

We’ll also ask you to consider other websites, including those of your top competitors. Knowing what your competitors are doing will not only help you compete better but will also allow you to learn from their mistakes -- when you know what doesn’t work on their websites, you can avoid putting it on yours.

Each element of the Web Design Checklist has a specific purpose, outlined below. Be sure to complete the checklist fully in order to ensure that the final product meets all of your needs.

What is the purpose of your website? What is the primary goal you’d like it to accomplish? Do you want it to provide information? Market your products or services? Support e-commerce opportunities? Interact with clients or consumers?

Many websites can support multiple functions, but the main purpose will determine how the content and features are prioritized. For example, a site designed primarily to provide information may have additional features for e-commerce, but these will not be as prominent as they would be on a site whose primary concern was selling products online.         

Once you’ve established the website’s objective, you need to distill a main message. This is much like branding your product or company – it’s establishing the key point you want visitors to take away with them. Your website can contain lots of information, but visitors will never remember it all. Crafting a key message to be placed strategically and repeatedly around the site will help ensure visitors get the point –and remember it.

Repeating a main message throughout the site is also a functional way to create unity and coherence within both the content and the design. 

Now that you know how your site will serve users and what message it will send them, you can properly define your website’s audience. Who will get the most use out of your site? To whom do you want to send your message?

The Internet allows you to reach an especially large and diverse audience, but without a clear target, it’s difficult to aim, let alone hit the mark. While you want your website to appeal to a broad number of people with varied backgrounds and characteristics, you have to determine a main audience – the gender, age group, racial/ethnic/cultural background, education level, income range, and marital status of the people that you most want to visit your website.

Knowing your target audience will allow you to focus your content and select appropriate, attractive features and design elements.

Knowing your competitors is the first step to beating them. Providing your Web designer with a list of 2-5 of your biggest competitors will require you to identify these competitors and get to know them, thereby allowing you to position yourself in the marketplace. It will also provide your Web designer with a reference point for your product, service, or organization, which allows him or her to create a more effective, more competitive website.

You’re probably a Web user, and chances are that what you like (or don’t like) about websites are the same things that will appeal (or not) to others. Plus, your website should represent your vision, which includes the features and design elements you like.

Pointing your Web designer to the 2-5 sites that most appeal to you – both visually and functionally – will help your designer determine the look and feel that will best suit your site. Make sure to be specific about what it is that attracts you to the site. Is there a color or graphic you find particularly appealing? Is there a feature you find especially useful or entertaining?

Don’t forget: knowing what you don’t want or don’t like can sometimes be as useful as knowing what you do. Point out any visual or functional elements that you find particularly distracting or annoying, too.

Most companies and organizations want their websites to be readily identifiable, so incorporating a logo or other branding material is quite common. You may also wish to include electronic versions of your company or organization’s marketing materials (brochures, newsletters, press releases, etc.). Identify any corporate logos, graphics, or colors that you’d like included in your site design, as well as the title(s) of any marketing documents to be included in the site content.

Web content can be approached in many ways. Aside from the differences between informative, marketing, and sales content, Web pages can be either text or image heavy. Providing your Web designer with a few key descriptors for the content that will appear on your site can help that:

a)      the site design can accommodate such content, and

b)      the site design will complement the content, creating a cohesive final product

 

Colors are not just pretty; they have meanings and inspire certain feelings or impressions. Many companies have a corporate color scheme, as displayed in their logo, letterhead, and other corporate materials. If your company or organization doesn’t have such a color scheme, the website design process offers the perfect opportunity to create one. (Note: When creating a color scheme, don’t just opt for colors you like; think about what the color might represent to potential clients. That being said, you want the colors you choose to be visually appealing, both alone and together.)

List one or more colors you’d like included in your website, as well as any ideas you have for incorporating them (e.g., borders, main screen color, titles, main text, links, etc.). Don’t overdo it, though; too many colors will distract visitors and detract from the site’s content.

Do you want the site navigation along the left side of the screen or the right – or perhaps across the top? Will graphics be placed in a standard location, or randomly page by page? How many images per page? Should the text appear in columns? How much text do you want per page?

Making some general layout decisions before hiring a site designer will help speed the Web design process and ensure that the site functions according to your needs. List one or more websites whose layout resembles what you’d like your site to look like. Be sure to flag any “must-have” items, as well as to note any areas where the designer can make changes or suggestions.

Today’s websites are capable of handling many different features, such as Flash, banners, blogs, photo galleries, news feeds, and calendars. Regular or return users can create accounts, signing in on each visit to access members-only or personalized features. List the features you would like your website to include.

As with certain design elements, too many features can be distracting and even annoying, so avoid adding unnecessary features just because they are interesting or currently popular. Add only the features you think will be of benefit to your target audience or will help the site meet its objective.

Depending on the purpose of your website, you may wish to include some other elements in the design, such as a list of key individuals in your company or organization, or a catalogue of products available. List any additional elements you’d like to have included in your website.