Website design is like making a book. It has many parts and plots working together and if you manage to pull it off you'll have a classic like Star wars.
Today we share with you the "How to Start a Web Design Project" by Designmodo. In this post we'll break down the process with you and share with you relevant links and resources to get your design project done.
This post is relevant not only to web designers but also to business owners looking to manage the making of their website.
Here is the awesome inforgraphic by designmodo.com to view our breakdown of the infographic explaning more on it and sharing relevant links and resources to get you going.
Scroll further down after the infographic.
So now let's get started and let's break down this infographic.
Project Management
"You’re not just a designer - you’re a project manager, and offering a great customer service experience is essential for winning over your clients’ repeat business, so you’ll need to be on target from day one."
-deisngmodo.com
Because web designhas many moving parts it is best to set clear targets and boundaries from the start of the project to have better clarity as to what needs to be achieved and how it will be executed.
Setting Objective
In setting the objective we suggest the use of the SMART goal-setting method as it is relatively well known and easy to remember.
S stands for Specific. What are the specifics of the projects? Don't settle for we want a ecommerce site targetted towards young techies.
Try to get as specific as possible by asking open questions that can't be answered with just a simple yes or no. Like, "How young are these techies?" "At what age maximum?"
An example of a specific goal would be: An ecommerce site using shopify that is targetted towards techies in America with age ranging from 19 to 29 years old.
M stands for Measurable. This would involve setting milestones to track progress and make sure the team is on schedule. It is also useful for arranging partial payment schedules throughout the project.
Measurable milestones could include initial webpage sketch approval, homepage approval, website testing, and webiste publishing.
This could also include the number of revisions set to not exhaust the web design team and help the client be more specific and thorough in communicating his objectives for the website.
To get to know more about the SMART goal-setting method I recommend ou to follow through this wonderful guide by sparkpeople.com
http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/motivation_articles.asp?id=1794
This template by hubspot for setting SMART marketing goals may also be beneficial to your web design project:
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33898/How-to-Set-SMART-Marketing-Goals-for-2013-TEMPLATE.aspx
Target Audience
Who are the client's existing and prospective buyers? What online groups do they belong to? What age group? And other things they have in common among each other.
We will delve deeper into this on the Buyer Persona section below.
Purpose
This will also help you in making the objectives Specific and Measurable. Is the clients purpose to increase pageview of the website? Or is it to convert more of those pageviews into email subscribers?
This will also help you to not just make another cool website but help you understand your client's business better and in turn enable you to be of greater service to his cause.
Content and Feature Requirement
This is all about the copy on the website. The text for the About Us page, the number of webpages for the project, and what those pages will be all about.
You can ask the client to provide you with past marketing materials such as brochures to have something to put in those places for the mean time.
This also needs to be discussed as this may "accidentally" broaden the scope of work for you later on.
Budget
This is where your negotiation skills kicks in.
I would suggest to have a safe bottomline number in mind. But let the client say the first number then work from there.
Timeline
Here you can make use of setting milestones to track progress and negotiate partial payment releases as certain milestones are achieved.
Scope
This is to determine how many webpages you will be making. Whether you can and should reboot their existing logo. And if you need to get a copywriter in to help you put together the content.
Ownership and rights
This involve those non-disclosure agreements for the clients privacy. Who will be providing the stock images and if you should or not give the sourcefile to the client.
Target User Personas
Is basically target market levelled up. In here you try to get into the target market's head much deeper.
Getting past to their demographics to inquiring about the goals and challenges they face and reasons why they buy from your client.
These include getting to know their:
Background
Demographics
Words they use
Goals
Challenges
How your clients are able to help them with those goals and challenges
To get more information about this I suggest going over http://offers.hubspot.com/free-template-creating-buyer-personas.
Where they have an awesome comprehensive and easy-to-follow template for this use.
Bonus here is the directlink to the hubspot template:
www.hubspot.com/Portals/53/docs/Buyer%20Persona%20Template.pptx
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