How to tell the designer what you want?

After choosing the firm that will conceptualize your web site, you will be faced with the challenge of actually explaining what you need done in plain English and have the designer interpret and transcribe your ideas into technology. A better understanding of website composition from your end will allow us to serve you better and ensure that the project will be completed to your satisfaction as effectively, accurately and economically as possible.

A typical web site consists of 5  major elements:

- Content: articles, about us, privacy policy, contact information
- Structure: sections, categories, index, site map, menus
- Layout: where to put the elements, structure, content
- Elements: text color, font- size - type, color
- Graphics: images, animation. color scheme

Content:

What is your product or service?  What makes you different from your competitors? What is your target audience? You should ask yourself these questions in order to have great content for your website. On the Internet, quality is very important is directly correlated to credibility.

It's a good idea to treat your web site content writing like you would for an essay. The text for your website should be crafted with the highest of attention to detail. Grammar, orthographic and punctuation rules will need to be followed to the letter. Appropriate vocabulary is also important to show that you are an expert in your field.

Care should also be taken not to sound too "sales pitchy".  Online customers don't like to be sold on products or services in way that might work with conventional  offline sales methods. The informational approach is usually the best, educate your prospective clients to make the right purchasing decision. Do this job right and you won't have to worry about the competition.

Try to use keywords that are specific to your industry but don't overdo it. A keyword repeated 5-10 times per page is sufficient, anything more could be seen as spam by search engines and could get your web site in trouble.

Make sure to provide us with at least 5 pages of content. One of these could be the homepage, the others as a general guideline should include at the minimum an "about us" page, privacy policy ( we can draft one for you ), contact us and pricing. Every page should contain a minimum of 250 words but preferably 500 or more.

Another important piece of content is your contact information. In order to be taken seriously by search engines, it is crucial to provide us with your full street address including postal code, telephone number including regional and country code, province/state, country and email address. If you already own a business, use your registered and yellow pages address as search engines often share database information with them. Local search is getting increasingly important in the eyes of search engines, and showing them clearly where you are located will be well rewarded.

Layout:

 Just like all cars might have different color schemes, engine sizes, power options or brand, they all share a common denominator: they have 4 wheels. The same goes for websites. The vast majority of web sites on the world wide web use a similar layout. It's based on the banner, navbar left, mainframe, navbar right and footer. Customization is of course available but this is the standard  most effective, accepted, favored and economical format.

Using this map will help you locate and organize where you want things to appear on your site:

 Graphics:

The graphical interface of a web site consists of images, color schemes and animations. These aspects of web design are highly subjective and are mostly left at the discretion of the client. However, some color schemes and image quality can be at times inadequate or detrimental to the web site's overall appearance and theme. It is sometimes best to simply give us a choice of 3 colors that represent your business the best, we will then draft you layout so you can see what colors will be used and where they will be located on the web site.

We can provide the images from professional stock photography or your can provide us with your own. Accepted format is .gif, .png or .jpeg. Images can be bigger and shrunk down to size but not the other way around. All custom logos, animations and graphic design can be done for you at a nominal fee.

Elements:

Elements are parameters that control variables of the site. They include but are not limited to text color/size/font/style, heading color, border color, border thickness, buttons and much more. Please remember however that all options are not always available since it might depend on the layout and template of the site. Let us know what you desire using the following guidelines and we will let you know what is possible or not and at what customization cost if modification is plausible.

Structure:

How will you organize your content? This is a very important step of website design. Your information must flow in a logical and hierarchical manner. Ideas need to be defined, organized and classified. The best formula for this it the Grand Father > Son > Grand Son hierarchy.

All information on the site should be based on this model. Just like a book has an index, chapters and a glossary, a website also has it's particular standardized structure characteristics that should be adhered to in order to have a solid structure and foundation. A well structured site will also be a lot easier to manage for future expansion and modifications.