Preparing a Design Specification

Step 1. Goals and concept

First, we need to understand your business – its history and principles. Do you offer goods or services? We need to know what your market positioning is, what unique selling points there are, your brands, key advertisement ideas and prices. No one can help us better than you, so our job at this point is primarily to ask questions and listen.

Our goal is to make each “click” on your site profitable for your company. So we need to prepare a social, economic and demographic “portrait” of visitors and understand how he or she uses your site.

Usually your site’s visitors can be separated into several target groups. Divisions are based on criteria such as age, sex, occupation, education, wealth and location. We can also look at what type of business they have, their relationship to your business (are they existing customers, new customers or occasional visitors), etc. For each group we should know:

• How do they use your site?
• What type of information are they looking for?
• What reasons might there be for their first time visit, and how can we get them to come back?

Second, we need to make this site useful for you. We need to define the role it will play in your business. Answer the following questions:

• Why are we making this site?
• What problems does it solve?
• What benefits does it bring my company?
• What short-term and long-term goals do I have for this site?

There are many questions like this that can be asked, depending on your company’s profile and practices.

After we define your goals and create outlines of target groups, the most important questions can be answered, such as what we want from the site, what types of visitor it will attract and how they will use it. So now the general concept has been formed.

We’ll present you with the concept for final adjustments and approval. There needs to be solid agreement between us at this point because any vagueness or misunderstandings can result in a costly and ineffective development process. Please keep in mind that the concept is only defined once during the site’s life cycle -- at the very beginning.

Step 2. Analyzing competitors’ sites

Usually you want to visually distinguish your website from the sites of similar companies. Your site should also have all of the functions that are typically found on the websites in your particular market sector. For example, an online store should have features like a product database, a search form, shopping cart and payment options. It is also useful to know what other people are doing. That’s why we take the time to analyze your competitors’ websites. Not only does it help us identify key features and successful solutions but it also ensures that the site we create for you surpasses those of the competition.

Step 3. Defining a structure

A website is an organized presentation of information and people browse it by navigating between pages. We can’t present all of the data and functions at once, so it is important to have the right website structure in place. The first thing we do when planning the site structure is to take into account the user’s needs. Second, we make sure that the visitor can understand the information presented and navigate the site without a problem.

The site’s structure is mapped out in a diagram similar to an organizational chart or a tree where the “root” is the main page and the main menu categories and submenus are the “leaves”. We connect them with arrows that represent the links between pages. Usually we deal with organized data in a hierarchical fashion (such as in a product catalog). But we can essentially link any “leaf” of our tree to any other one, if it would make navigation easier or more logical.

With the ability to view the structure in chart form, we can easily review and optimize it, adding or removing items from menus and submenus as needed.

A well-planned structure usually remains the same throughout site development. In contrast, if the structure is not thoroughly planned out, a simple task such as adding a new menu item can lead to the costly re-planning of the site. That’s why structure is so incredibly important.

4. Site outline

At this stage, we construct a “mock-up” of your website’s pages called a site outline. In the site outline, we create pages that have a similar visual style, composition and menu structure to the site that is planned. During this phase we try out our ideas and check the site outline for usability and effective navigation between pages. By doing this, we can avoid many mistakes and make necessary corrections before we enter the development process.

If you have any questions, please contact us >>