An important consideration with web site design is navigation. Users and prospective customers who visit your site would want to easily find their way around, or else they leave. If you have an online business, you would want to generate as much traffic to your website as possible and make as many sales. However, this is possible only if users stay in your site long enough to understand what your site is all about and appreciate what you have to offer. Remember that Internet surfers are an impatient bunch and wouldn’t bother to stay in your site if they can’t easily find what they need.

Web Site Design - Navigation Schemes

There are many navigation schemes you can choose from when planning your site’s web site design. Familiarize yourself with these schemes Know the pros and cons so that you have a web site design that works for your intended audience.

The different navigation schemes are text links, image maps, navigation buttons, drop-down menus, and dynamically generated URL’s. Each navigation system has its pros and cons. For example, text links are easily understood and load fast, while graphic images are more attractive, although they load more slowly. Drop-down menus don’t require much space, but drop-down menus created using Javascript or CGI scripts may not work in old browsers. Dynamically generated URL’s that result from the site’s search function allow users to easily find what they need, but search engine spiders will not be able to automatically index these dynamic pages.

It is best to plan your site’s navigation before you actually go into the web site design. Be sure to choose a navigation scheme that will suit your web site design and the web site templates you decide to use.

Web Site Design - Navigation Tips

Your web site design should be such that users can easily understand your interface. The web site design should also be implemented in a way that users will easily identify links. This can be done by using conventions for links such as menus, buttons, underlined text or other effects. When using non-conventional links, the site should provide instructions on what the user can do. The “three click rule” must also be kept in mind when creating the web site design. This means that every page in your web site must be reachable in three clicks, as users will usually not click more than three times to get what they need.

Below are some general tips when incorporating a navigation scheme into your web site design:

• Your web site design must have a neat and uniform navigation system.
• Use text links whenever possible, as they are more easily understood.
• Your web site design should include a site map so users can easily find what they need.
• Your web site design should be created such that the navigation system is located on the right, as it will be easier for users to go through the navigation system when it’s located near the scroll bar.
• Your web site design should have a navigation scheme that is flexible enough to allow for the easy addition of links.
• The main links and other navigational elements should be grouped together, and the important links should be “highlighted”.
• Short, clear and concise words should be used for the links.

Keep your web site design both appealing and functional. Make the exploration of your web site a pleasant experience for visitors, and you’ll surely be pleased by the results, too!

Analysis of website architecture used to be simply organizing the information and contents into a logical presentation such that any user can easily navigate your site. The good old way is to follow the standard website category structure as follows:

• Home
• Products and Services
• Portfolio / Clients
• News / Events
• About Us

However, this is so old, dull and 90s. Most sites nowadays has adopted Web 2.0 standards which includes more dynamic contents and allows users to collaborate with each other. Websites should not be viewed as static informational pages rather as strategic tools to get more customers and larger market share. Diagram below is a perfect expression of Web 2.0 corporate sites:

Several functionalities need to be analyzed to maximize the potential of your corporate site. They are as follows:

• Corporate Blogs - Publish articles for your corporate identity and show your domain expertise. Use of appropriate blogging tools also increases your SEO ranking due fresh contents.
• Support Forums - Provide online support to your customers via forums. These public forums will eventually serve as your support knowledge base and users get their support via forums.
• Corporate Calendar - Announce corporate events and news using graphical calendar views.
• Mailing Lists - Mailing lists need to be targetted based on user profiles. Never send irrelevant emails to reduce spam.
• Community - Build a community to increase loyalty of your users. As part of a community, users have a reason to regularly check your site for messages, company updates and events.
• User Profiles - Provide user registration and log user activities. This will give you user specific statistics and personalized service.
• Online Services - Change your business by giving online services and support online purchases. Online services should be recorded to give you more information about your customers and improve your customer profiling.

By providing the above functionalities, companies build an online identity, support knowledge base and customer profiles. This is essential to any company or business - online identity ensures you protect your brand and public image, support knowledge base improves your customer support and decreases your operational support cost, and most importantly, customer profiles allow you to understand your customer and market needs to better improve your products and services.

In addition, Seach Engine Optimization (SEO) also needs to be considered. When analyzing and designing web sites, consider your market and how customers will find you. In the new world of internet search, you need to know your keywords. Aside from this, know your partners for link building and study your competitors. Keep in mind that SEO is a continuing effort, it takes time and effort to build your search credentials and even more to maintain it.

Finally, take a look at the technologies involved? Consider answering the following questions:

• What are the web tools needed (php, Flash, Ruby on Rails, java, etc)?
• Do you have a domain name?
• Who will be your hosting provider?
• What is the bandwidth, server space, etc?

In conclusion, analyzing site architecture may involve more than just organizing contents. This also requires user, market and technology analysis.

A requirements document is a very powerful tool if used properly. This maybe the most hated task of developers, yet it is essential. As the saying goes - “Do the right things, then do things right“. Requirements documentation helps ensure that developers are doing the right things, before they do it right. Although new methodologies have been developed to reduced documentation, I still believe that requirements document should be maintained throughout the project cycle.

Some benefits of proper requirements documentation are:

• Serves as a tool to communicate with various stakeholders. This document will help you ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the project requirements. Any conflicts on the requirement with various stakeholders must be resolved and documented here.
• Validates the project objectives. The requirements listed in the document can be mapped against the project objectives to see if they are met.
• Helps uncover loopholes, defects in the requirements. Defects due to requirements are costly if not uncovered early during the project cycle. This is because you have to go back and change the requirements, update the design, test scripts, source codes and retest the application. So, well thought and well written requirements will definitely save you time and money in the long run.
• Serves as your bible for the rest of the project activities - analysis, design, programming and testing. All activities performed in the project should be associated to a requirement as listed in this document. Otherwise, you might be doing something that is not needed.

I am not recommending any specific process in performing requirements gathering. In my years of experience, I have seen various methods of eliciting requirements from client and there is no universal way of getting it. So, it really depends on the client’s role, knowledge, authority, attitude, working habits, among others. Nevertheless, I believe that there needs to be some standard form of organizing requirements - that is… I believe in establishing standard template to document requirements. It doesn’t really matter how you collect and elicit requirements, as long as you write it down in a standard format that everybody in your project understands.

Here is the Requirements Document Template that we use during requirements gathering. This template is a simplified version of Volere Requirements Template and has been customized to fit our needs. Some items in the template may not be relevant to other projects - in such case, specify none instead of removing the section.

Here is a list of questions that should be asked to the client during the initial interview for a web design project.

Management

• What is the main objective of the site? How about secondary objectives?
• Who will be the owner or webmaster of the site?
• Who are the primary content experts?
• Is there a budget allocated for the site? If so, what is the price range?

Web Design

• Who are the intended audience, target market? What are their attitudes?
• What is the image/brand that you like to project? (e.g. avant-garde, hip, trendy, corporate, knowledgeable, conservative, etc.)
• Do you have an existing logo? slogan? brochures? If so, please provide us a copy.
• What are the products and services that you like to offer on the web? What is your competitive advantage.
• Do you have an existing site map? *
• Please provide list of competitors’ web site along with their strengths and weaknesses.
• Please provide sample of sites that you like, and specify why you like them.
• Please provide sample of sites that you DON’T like, and specify why.

Technology

• Do you have the domain name registered?
• Do you have identified web hosting provider?
• What is the expected average # of visitors? What are their connection bandwidth?
• Do you have need to support browsers other than IE, Firefox and Netscape? If so, please specify, with minimum version
• Is there a need to dynamic content? (e.g. blogs, news, forum, etc?)
• Any specific functionalities that require more than HTML scripting.*
• Is there a need for audiovisual content? (e.g. vidcast, podcast)

Some questions may not be directly answered by client - specially the ones marked with *. In such case, you need to work with them on their requirements to further understand the need.