Core Process Of Designing Website Design website in professional way

I've been going throught a lot of stuffs since 2 years ago when I start thinking of blogging.

Till recently, I still didn't have a nice blog.

I've build some blogs, all of them end up abandoned--

either because I see it's not what I wanted, or I see nobody else want to read it.

Some of them started with a good idea, then, go too far till my thoughts become unmanagable.

 

I was frustrated--

Why some people's blog is about a small topic but hanging there shinning. Why my brilliant ideas can't get implemented.

 

I did some deep thinking, joined an online web design training course.

Finally I understand my failures were not in web design itself. I failed in the process of building a blog.

 

Following a professional process leads to efficiency and success. Unorganized actions leads to nowhere, merely waste time.

 

Since I learned my lessons, I followed the professional way. Within 3 months, I made my first completed blog and feel sattisfied at how it looks and how it works. The rest is for my audience to judge.

 

I want to share with my Asta fellow bloggers the professional process that I learned from the training course. Because I know many of you are going through the same mess as I did. Hope it assist you to your blogging success!

 

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Core Process of Designing Website

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Step one: Define

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In this step, you should establish a firm idea of "What's it all about". Without a clear defination, our "creative" ideas might bring us travel too far beyond our ability or beyond our real needs.

 

1 Research

I'm sure most of us are doing lots of research before and during blog design. But, does the result of your research efficiently provide you valuable insights to move on? Write down the following questions and give yourself answers. It will help your idea become clear, become a project that can be implemented within desired scope. It helps you stay with what you really want and what you can do.

 

1.1 Know yourself

What do you really want to do?

1.2 Know Your Site Users

Who are your audiences?

Why are they coming to your site?

1.3 Know your competitors

What are the other doing right now?

How your site fit into the landscape?

2 Plan

After research, we establish a clear defination about our blog. How to start implement it? We make a detailed plan to tell ourselves what to do next, when to do it, how much money should be involved, how many resources are needed. We also setup a high level goal which can be achivable if things going well. But at least we should achive each stage that we planned in order to move on to the next.

 

2.1 Create a Project Plan

2.2 Set Budget

2.3 Create Schedule

2.4 Assign Team-- if it's a group blogging, or you cooperate with others to design blog for clients.

2.5 Set up Stage

2.6 Plan for Testing

3 Clarify

 

3.1 Set High-Level Goals

3.2 Prepare Communication Brief-- if design blog for clients, you need to provide a well designed picture to show the client how it looks and get their feed back, then, adjust your plan according to client's opinion.

3.3 Kick off the Project

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Step Two: Structure

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A well designed structure is what keeps our blog alive. On this step, we not only make sure our content is meaningful but also we will make sure how to deliver it.

 

1 Content Plan

 

1.1 Audit Existing Content

1.2 Outline What's neccessory

1.3 Create Content Delivery Plan--where you get the content?

OUtlines each page or section in a phased deliveray process

2 Structure Site

2.1 Create Sitemap

How the site is layed out at high level content and user perspective?

Key tasks-- users come to learn,download,listen to music...?

Function Area

2.2 Set Naming Conventions-- a good naming convention makes the site looks organized, not confusing users.

 

2.3 Structure Pages

 

2.4 Create Wireframes-- there are softwares helping to do this, but you can also draw a picture on paper.

Outline Contents that is needed

How the Contents are organized in the page

2.5 Address Navigation-- Your navigating system should not leave users in difficulties in finding stuffs in your site.

 

2.6 Naming & Labeling

 

2.7 Define User Tasks

Suppose your site provide a file to download. Start from a user landing on your page, what are the clicks he/she will go through to finally arrive the download link?

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Step Three Design

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In the Designing process, we should always keep in mind that we are design it for the users. Why they come here? How to make them interested in your stuffs? How to make them get what they want?

 

1 Create

 

1.1 Review Site Goals

Make sure the design take out the Communiction Brief

Undertand where the original goals were set up for the site

1.2 Develop Concepts

1.3 Design for the User

1.4 Presenting for the Designs-- if you are designing for clients.

2 Confirm

 

2.1 Create HTML protosite

2.2 Test Functionality

3 Hand-off-- if you are designing for clients

 

3.1 Create Graphic Templates

3.2 Create Design Style Guide

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Step Four Build

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Most of us start building blogs from this stage. Read back, what did you miss? I'm sure if you go through the above 3 steps before building your blog, you will save a lot of time and hassles.

 

1 Prepare

 

1.1 Assess Project Status

1.2 Establish Guidlines

1.3 Set File Structure

2 Build

 

2.1 Slice and Optimize

2.2 Create HTML Templates

2.3 Implement Light Testing

2.4 Populate Pages

2.5 Intergrade Backend-- since most of us are using WordPress or similiar software, this job become easy.

3 Test

3.1 Create a QA Plan. Ask your friends or clients questions, get their feedback.

3.2 Prioritize and Fix Bugs

3.3 Conduct Final Survey-- After bug fix, get feedback from friends or clients again.

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Step Five Measure

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Finally, our blog is ready to show up. One thing I would address here is -- blog design process is not static. It's a dynamic interactive process. After launch, during the entire life of our blog, we continuing get feedback and we continueing discover better solutions, so we keep the process going, Everyday Closer to Perfection!

 

1 Deliver-- publish our blog or deliver the design to our clients

 

2 Launch

2.1 Prepare Announcement Plan-- in case you need promote your site at lanch

2.2 Register with Search Engines

2.3 Launch Site

3 Maintain

 

3.1 Maintenance Team

3.2 Capabilities

3.3 Internal Maintenance

3.4 Develop Maintenance Plan

3.5 Measure Success

3.6 Confirm Site Security

3.7 Interactive Redesign

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Final thoughts- the way we organize our jobs directly impact what we get as final result. I hope the above notes that I took from my training course help you as much as it helped me.

Thank you for such an informative and well laid-out post. A lot of useful information in there for beginners, not just blog makers but full content web design as well.

Wow, very informative. Thank you for the information!