I try to have a system for everything I do.

Lou
Lou Sparx’s last blog post: When Metal and Animals Meet Photoshop

I’m a web design student and referenced your site on best steps for planning a website. I love your work, amazing web skills and a hottie!

so I guess that makes you a web hottie

Your article is pretty neat and clearly stated all the points. In fact, I wanted share my NON-IT staff about the Web Development Workflow. Believe me! This is what exactly I wanted to share. It is quite simple but very effective understanding. With your permission, I would like to share the info with my staff as well.

However, in the real world relationship of Client/Developer there are all these little subsections that you seem to have omitted somewhere between steps 1 and 4 where the client continues to change their mind about how they want things to look and/or work.

This is turn leads to a number of rewrites to the overall plan and thus increases the amount of workload.

There are also the countless clients who quite honestly don’t have a God given CLUE what they want or how they want the site to look! (I HATE THESE)
Josh’s last blog post: v2.5.3 Feature Requests

~lyndon

I am really thankful to the author for such a great help.

I read your article and think that you have some excellent high level information here. I’d be very interested in hearing your viewpoint in the process between design and development.

When showing a photoshop comp, do you use anti-aliased text for what will be html text?

Do you ever work on larger efforts in which you are not designing and developing the site but are working with a more nuts to bolts backend /application developer?

I have very similar professional experience to you and would love to know your stance on communicating technical restraints on original designs.

Kudos on the beautiful blog and great info.

abiXalmons last blog post..Negative Earning in ShoppingAds

Chris.

@val – Thank you too! I’m glad you liked Pick Nick’s Brain – we just made some minor design changes last weekend, too.

vals last blog post..Top 3 Reasons you’ll love CSS Overflow

THANK YOU so much for the very kind words on my design!

@Ralph – Thanks. It is definitely meant to be a summary and not a step by step guide, though. It’s a pretty long post to begin with, LOL.

Although maybe an idea for a rainy day (or week?) would be to expand upon this and post individual articles with additional details for each of the 6 steps. Definitely something to think of for some future post ideas!

Often times, you or the client might think – oh, it’s just a link (or ten ) – but it does influence the design – as well as development. Many times you base the design on the number of links outlined in the planning stage – 5 links could easily fit across one line in a horizontal format. But 10 links would likely need to go in more of a sidebar setup.

A horizontal or vertical navigation system can make a huge impact on a site’s design. That’s why it’s important to settle on such details early on in the process.

@Fubiz – Thanks! I’m glad you like the article!

@Lifda – I’m glad you like the article, too! Sorry about the light on dark text.

It is interesting to see opinions on this. For the most part it seems to not bother most people, but there are a few who have difficulty reading it. Something to keep in mind for future re-designs. I appreciate the feedback!

@SeannyB and @Drew – Thanks for those links! As I guessed, this does indeed seem to be a fairly universal process. The specifics do vary from person to person, but the foundation is primarily the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle

http://www.cheb.com.au/how-to-build-a-website-design-websites-easy-steps/

I can’t stress enough that information gathering and planning should come before design, as content should drive design and not the other way around.

\r\nGreat in depth article outlining the numerous phases of web design\r\nOnce you give your web des…

@Karl – Thanks so much – I’m glad you enjoyed reading about the process. And thanks for “backing me up” on the readability issue. That is a good suggestion you have for George (one that I’ve done on the past on other sites that I really have found difficult to read!)

@The Loon – I’m glad you like the article, and my blog design, too!

I do reference the sitemap creation, which is a major step. You are right that there is more in-depth work involved… this was primarily intended to serve as an overview of the process (especially for non-designers considering hiring someone to create a web site for them).

I definitely agree that the planning stage often gets overlooked, or not focused on as much as it should be. It sounds like you have a great setup for planning out your sites in advance, though!

P.S. Nice blog design!

@George; Consider an eye test, there is nothing that I can find wrong with the layout of the style she used, nor can I see anyone having similar problems. Perhaps it is just you, so try this; highlight the text you want to read, often that dulls the surrounding area and makes it less sore on the eyes to read.

Thanks for the Post!

Although now that I am building sites with validated code, I do work some basic SEO into the mix during the development phase (ie. proper headings, as well as alt / title tags for images, etc.)

It’s just been my own experience that the clients don’t provide the meta tag info until the end. Of course, things such as the sitemap files need to wait until the end – sitemap.xml in particular, but there are several formats… Obviously the actual submission must wait until the site is complete, as well.

You are correct, though – that in building the site the designer/developer needs to be conscious of at least the basic elements of SEO, so the site is built correctly from the start.

Thanks for giving me something to think about – I might have to refine the process a little bit to incorporate SEO better.

As a consumer, when I am considering different companies for a particular product or service that I’m interested in and my decision is down to two companies… one with a web site, and one without… 9 times out of 10 I end up going with the company that has the web site.

I almost always pick the company with a web site, because I’m able to learn more about the company itself, and/or the product or service I’m interested in, etc. I’m sure I’m not the only consumer who thinks along similar lines, too. So yes, I’m a web designer, so I might be biased, lol, but overall, I do think it is a very worthwile business expense. One that any small (or large) business will be able to reap the benefits from for years to come.

@Joshua – So glad you like the article – Thank You for the Stumble!

@Luis – I’m glad you like the article, too! I did write it with the client in mind, so I’m glad to see that it’s coming in handy to other designers, as well.

I certainly will use some of these ideas in future projects, as well as transmit them to clients. I love the idea of information gathering being the first step – many clients tend to give you only bits of info at the beginning.

Thank you for writing a great easy-to-read article

Stumbled.

@Jay – Unfortunately you are very right about that. I should have included a disclaimer that this is how it “should” go.

Although, it is important to have a good system in place to eliminate going back and forth between stages – especially going from development back into design.

What I personally do is make sure that the client fully approves of the design before continuing into the development stage. I don’t start coding any html until I receive final approval on both the home and interior page designs.

This is where a good contract comes in – to protect both you as the designer, as well as the client. I have been burned in the past – haven’t we all? – and now specify a certain number of designs and revisions that are included with the starting price. This way the client knows, right off the bat, that if we go beyond the agreed upon number of unique designs or rounds of changes, etc. that it will be billed as an additional charge.

Similarly, I also include a clause that there will be extra charge if significant changes are requested to a previously approved design. I actually had this happen to me recently. Becuase of the up-front and very open line of communication that we have, this client was more than ok with the extra charge, since they knew that they had already approved the design (and we were well into development) when they requested a fairly big design change.

I guess overall, it’s important to set the expcatations and “limits” up front so no one is disappointed down the line. Yes, extra work for the designer, but as long as they are compensated for their time, and NOT taken advantage of, then sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

In practice, somewhere in step 3 or 4, you get some new information and that causes more work back in 2 and 3, leaving little wiggle room for 5. By the time 6 comes up, your client wants to start at 1 again…

I’m glad to hear you think the colors work – I actually have heard from several people that although it is usually difficult to read light on dark, that this particular combination seems to work. To each his own, though…

Thanks again! I checked out your site and dropped an Entre Card on you, too.

I enjoyed this post, so I subscribed to your feed and dropped by EntreCard for you too. Keep up the great work.

@George – I’m sorry you feel that way. Design of course is completely subjective. It’s all about personal opinion, and what I think works for me, you might not think works for you, etc. Very subtle, but I use light grey type, which is less jarring than pure white on black.

The previous design was black text on a white background, so I wanted a change – in this case, one that matches the design of the main site (and light on dark is very good for designer portfolios, as the dark background helps portfolio pieces pop… in my case web design screenshots, but this works well for photography or illustrations, etc. too.)

I do appreciate your opinion, though, and will keep it in mind for future re-designs of the site.

@Polo – I’m glad you like the article!

Jason Rakowski