Download PowerPoint

Planning Your Web Site
When Designing a Site for Yourself
 You have the final say over the design and content
 There is no cut off point as to the completion date
 You are able to experiment with different styles of interaction
 Rough edges don't really matter
 You may be the only person to ever be involved with the source code
However…
When Designing a Site for a Client:
 You are not in control of certain aspects of the site. (Corporate Image –
Content)
 You are working to a deadline, after which the site will "go live"
 You need to get the styles of interaction, look and feel correct from the
site's launch
 Customers don't look kindly on "experimental" features
 Rough edges do matter
 Other people may be involved with your source code
To address these issues you will need:
 A design strategy to make sure the Web site's
design is correct early on in the design process
 Documentation to ensure that other people will
understand what you have done
 Procedures for testing your design to make sure it
works as intended
 Interaction with the client and the user. (To make
sure you are getting it right.)
Design Process
External Design
 The creative brief
 Decide on a Navigation Model
 Create a paper based design
 Create your “Wireframe”
 Develop you initial prototype
Internal Design
 Directory Structure
 Site Map
 Templates
 External CSS
The Creative Brief
 Specifies the overall direction of the project
 Gets the creative juices flowing
 Outlines the audience
 Expectations of the site
 The content of the site
Phones 4 Me Web Site
Creative brief 17/10/06
Project Summary
Phones 4 Me is a popular retailer of mobile phones and contracts. The
site is intended to allow customers to purchase handsets and contracts
over the Web.
Target Audience
Although all types of customers are welcome, the company specifically
wishes to target the 18 – 30 age range. 90% of the existing customers
fall within this bracket and the company is widely recognised as a
brand for this group.
Tone
The tone of the site should be youthful and dynamic with a slight
professional edge in order to be in line with existing marketing
strategy.
Navigation Models
 How will the pages link together?
 Linear
 Hierarchical
 Hub and Spoke
 Full Web
Linear Navigation Model. (Slide show.)
 Useful if you wish to control the users movement
through the site
 e.g. Good for a tutorial or presentation
Note navigation!
http://www.webreference.com/html/tutorial1/
Hierarchical Navigation Model
 Common on the Web, with a main page and then sub
pages linked off it and so on into the site
www.cse.dmu.ac.uk
Hub and Spoke Navigation Model
 User enters the central hub, the home page
 Any page is available from the home page
 Each page leads back to the home page
 Never more than a couple of clicks from the home page
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mjdean/notes/modules/multimedia/CSCI2608/0708/index.html
Full Web Navigation Model
 Each page links to every other page
 Risk of getting lost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Which navigation model?
 No specific model works best
 Many sites are a mix of different models
Paper based design
Couldn't be more non technical
 Paper – Pencil
 "Rough out" your initial plans
 Start with the main pages and think about how they
might look
Creating Storyboards
 Once you have an idea of how your site will look plan out a storyboard
 This is a presentation of what each page will do and the type of content
it will have
 PowerPoint is a quick and easy tool for creating story boards
 A story board (like a story) should have:
 A beginning.
 A middle.
 And an end.
Sample storyboard.
Wire-framing your site
A Wireframe is a digital rendering of the storyboard
 A "bare bones" model of your site
 No written content
 No graphics
 Just blank pages linked to each other identifying
 The intention of each page
 The means by which the pages are navigated
Sample wireframe
Internal Structure of the Site
 How are your files to be stored?
 Remember - The folder is your friend
 Use a logical structure
 Use folders that DreamWeaver can recognise
 Templates
 Graphics
Use Templates / External Cascading
Style Sheet (CSS)
 Templates define layout for similar pages.
 CSS defines colours, fonts (plus more) for specific
areas
Web page
(html file)
Web page
(html file)
Web page
(html file)
Web page
(html file)
Template
(dwt file)
Web page
(html file)
External
CSS
Web page
(html file)