Website to go online, ask yourself these 15 questions to make a decision

Any new website project, from design concept to final launch, is usually not an easy process. Especially when your website is for customers, it is a challenge to match your design to the needs of your customers.

Web page design to development now has become a mature complete system, whether it is to do their own website, or to others to do the site, are required in the implementation of the process of clear thinking, do not omit the details, so also to a large extent to avoid the site after the problem of embarrassment.

Do your homework beforehand so that you don't have to burn it afterwards. When you are doing site-related projects, you can follow the following 15 questions, to comb ideas.

1. What is the main business involved in the website?

The main business of the site owner and the perception of the designer, sometimes there will be huge differences, and this will gradually become a huge problem as the project progresses.

Before meeting with customers, we should do enough research to communicate with customers, and then carefully ask them about the details of the business. Learn about their main business, revenue streams, and how the site is going to increase revenue with the business. If you are involved in many projects, you will find that many of your clients ' business structures and revenue sources are quite different from what you initially imagined.

2. Who is the target user?

Small to the blog, Big to e-commerce platform, have a corresponding target audience. You need to figure out who the target audience is.

Once you understand your audience, you can create a virtual role based on it to refine your site's design elements, from font size to image style. Clearly know the user characteristics, can help you better improve the usability and functional characteristics of the site.

3. What do you want users to do on this site?

Each site should have a clear goal in both functionality and experience. And what does the owner of the site want users to do after they open the Web page?

Common behaviors of the user include:

• Click on a link to get information

• Purchase of products or services

• Fill out the form

• Play a game

• Click on the link to view the content (generate ad revenue)

• Register for an event/offer/benefit/service

• Download App

• Share via email or social media

There are a lot of things users can do through the website, and we can divide user behavior into two categories based on goals:

• Overall goal for the entire site: If the user can only do one thing, then what do you want them to do?

• Small target: Each page or module should be directed to a specific action, and these steps should collectively guide the user to perform the overall site goal.

4. Do you have a website now?

The problem seems to be easy to solve. Do you own a website, and what is its URL?

Are you the owner of the website domain name? You will find that many websites have content that is not owned by a domain name.

5. For this website, what places do you like and dislike?

This is also an easy problem to solve, find a piece of paper, and then take a pen, on the paper two columns, will you for the current site like parts and annoying parts are recorded.

This approach can help you to do a better job of re-design, for the current whole site elements have a better choice.

6. What is unique about your website/company?

When you have a clear concept of the customer's company, products, and services, and the customer has ideas for the revision of the current site, then you need to figure out the uniqueness of the company or product. What distinguishes them from other peers or similar products? Are there any things that only they can do?

When the selling point of your customer's product or service is clear, you can use the website to highlight the value of their product.

It doesn't sound like a hard job, but you have to be prepared for Daying Zhang. Because the actual situation is that the vast majority of enterprise organizations of products, may not be so prominent, their unique value is not so good mining.

7. What are the competitors?

Once you're familiar with your customers, you'll also need to know what kind of competitors you're going to be designing. What brands and websites are in the same market as your customers? Why would it be them? Next, you should take a closer look at the competitor's website to see if it can help you get inspired.

8. What are your favorite 3 websites?

Next, you need to prepare a homework for the customer. Instead of asking the question to your face, ask your client to come home and think about it before giving you an answer.

Let them list 3 to 5 of their favorite sites and let them try to explain why these sites attract them, and the qualities or reasons they admire.

Of course, you can also ask more questions on this basis, such as "If you want to ' steal ' a feature/element from these sites, which one will you choose?"

9. What are the necessary features of the website?

The vast majority of customers have some hard-to-do requirements for their websites, or they have basic ideas about the essential features of their sites.

However, the list entries provided by different customers can vary widely. Some may simply write "I hope it can be viewed on the phone", while some customers will be specific to an element to use the gradient or the first page to use parallax scrolling.

10. Is there any preparation for data analysis?

Understanding your site's current browsing data will help you to better revise and follow up. What do you and the customer think is important and ultimately match the actual user's browsing data?

Digging Web site data can help you answer these questions. With effective data analysis, you can better refine your entire project, especially when customers are not able to provide really useful reference data.

11. Do you have enough picture material available?

Have you got enough picture material to apply to the entire design? Are they clear enough? Can quality and modulation match the entire design?

Some customers will be ready for you in the first place, but more customers need you to communicate with them to get really usable, available images, video footage.

12. Do you have a color scheme and font?

The question seems to have been answered at the outset. But in the process of communicating with your customers, you should ask this question in a different way: do you have any ideas for fonts and colors? What colors and fonts do you want to use? Do you want to keep the old site's color and font in the new site?

Many new websites are often accompanied by the company's brand update, and when you design the site, you should adjust to avoid repetitive work.

Of course, in the implementation of the time will be a bit tricky, if the other side of the font of the comparison you have to go somewhere else to find the version of the page can be used or substitute for the approximate font.

13. Is there a brand style guide?

The brand style guide contains much more than just color and fonts. If your customer is a molded brand style guide, it can provide you with valuable information that includes brand style and tuning.

Some of the more complete brand style guides will even include the role characteristics of the brand user. In this way, you can eliminate the design of the brand user role in the process.

14. Do you have a timetable?

Next, you need to schedule your work, combine the customer and your work to develop a workable project schedule.

So, is this timetable flexible enough?

Time is pressing for the whole project to catch RTHK, so you should communicate with your customers to make sure the whole project goes smoothly.

15. After the website is online, do you have any plans for subsequent adjustments?

After the website is finally delivered to the customer, do you train them to ensure that they leave your technical support and are able to use the entire site correctly?

This actually has a close relationship with the way you build your website, especially the backend. The maintainability of the website and the agreement between you and the client have a clear causal relationship.

From the beginning you should customize the whole system in the way that customers want them, after all, you're not making a folio site for yourself.

Website to go online, ask yourself these 15 questions to make a decision