Web Design Best Practices
For approximately the last eight years I have been doing web design work for various companies, organizations, people, and non-profits. Through the years I?ve learned many lessons and have become better by analyzing my past work and determining areas where I can improve not only my designs but also my interactions with clients. What I?d like to share with you today are a few best practices that I learned the hard way. Hopefully by you reading these, you will be cognizant of them and thus not have to learn them the hard way.
The first thing I would highly recommend is to ask your client to provide you with a list of 3 to 4 sites in their industry that they love. Next, you?ll want them to annotate next to each site what they love about it. Make them describe why they love it. You aren?t going to copy these web site designs, but it does help you get a good idea of what your client does and does not like. Remember, you?re always trying to please the client first, so whether you like it or not almost doesn?t matter. By getting this list from them you are helping yourself by understanding your client?s tastes.
To go along with the list of sites that they love, you?ll also want to get a list from them of sites that they don?t like that are also in their industry. Again, you?ll want an explanation of why they do not like the sites. This will help you in avoiding design elements that they do not like. This is just as important as the list of sites that they love. Ensuring that you design something that leaves out elements that they hate is important.
The next item to focus on is navigation. Navigation is particularly important because it will drive how you lay out the site. You?ll want to determine some important aspects such as how many items are on the main level of navigation, if they need drop down or pop out menus, and if they need any hot buttons. It?s important to establish the navigation early and have your client commit. Knowing this will help you decide whether to put the navigation across the top or in a sidebar.
These are just a few tips for you to think about. They certainly are not things that I was thinking about when I first started out as a designer. Now, they are some of the first things that I think about and talk to the client about. These few simple things have drastically reduced the number of revisions I?ve had to do because I already have a good idea of the client?s likes and dislikes.
