Planning

Creating a functional, user-friendly Web interface takes three very important things: planning, planning and planning. That’s why, before we ever begin designing the interface, we review your mission plan and acquire a thorough knowledge of your target audience so that we might understand what their motivations are for visiting your site.

Designing the look and feel of a Web site without a clearly articulated mission plan can be a very subjective process. That can mean endless delays and cost increases because one person likes blue while another likes red. The mission plan allows the client and designer to objectively analyze proposed site designs by measuring it against specific strategic and branding objectives.

Next, we define and prioritize all content. This will determine where and what special functionality will be needed on your site. Finally, after all navigation issues are worked out we create the site map. We do not begin the actual design process until the site map is finalized. We feel that careful planning in the pre-design stage will prevent costly and time-consuming design changes once the site has been launched.

Look and Feel

Imagine you’re shopping for a new computer and you go to a store that advertises great prices. When you get there you discover that the place is a shambles. The paint is peeling, the merchandise is laying all over the place, the lights are flickering and the salesman looks like he’s out on parole. Are you going to go in and give him your credit card? Chances are very good that you’ll leave and take your business somewhere else.

The same scenario applies to your Web site. The look and feel of your site are very important factors in establishing credibility with your customers. If it doesn’t look professional it won’t be perceived that way. Users will determine from your site design whether they feel they can trust you enough to give you their credit card number. A well-designed Web site performs one critical function – it turns users into customers.

Our goal is to present the features and content that is valuable to users in an attractive, user-friendly interface. Our job as designers is to interpret your brand identity and translate it to your Web site. We integrate your brand imagery and personality into a well-designed package that includes site functionality, content and navigation. A successful interface design seamlessly blends complicated technical and programming issues of site functionality with the visual appearance of the site itself.

Navigation

Navigation should be simple and easy to understand. The Internet is not a passive medium. Visitors to your site are active and they each have unique ways to get to information they want. Because it is cost and time prohibitive to create totally unique interfaces for each user or group of users, we like to provide them with multiple entry points to access the same data. We also prefer to have primary navigation placed in the top half of the page, otherwise known as above the fold. This ensures that your navigational elements are always visible and helps to minimize site abandonment.

Testing

We recommend that each Web site go through a test period before the official launch date. This allows us time to find and fix bugs and for getting constructive user feedback. Sites that benefit the most from such a test period are those that contain dynamic content and those with a very complex architecture. We feel that, with proper planning, you should be able to conceptualize, test and finalize your site’s design before it goes live.

Contact us for more information about design services.