3. Plan & Structure

With the research complete, we now have a much better understanding of the context of what we are going to be creating and producing. A great saying that we repeat with staff and clients is "Fail to plan, plan to fail". It couldn't be more true.

In a web design project, the more time you spend planning and researching, the more directly it is correlated to the project's success. Planning isn't something nice to have, a "do a little of" activity. The main differentiator with a small business is understanding your customers better than your competitors understand their customers. As web designers in Aberdeen, we can say that is the secret to the success of a small business.

Goals

The website goals need to be explicitly set. With our experience in web projects, everyone then knows what the success of the project is based on. Getting 60% more enquiries by this time next year is a good example of a goal. With the goals set, all parties can align and come together to reach that goal. It's not some woolly target created in a flash of intuition. It's from our experience with websites, combined with your own expert knowledge of your industry.

Pen & Paper

We are advocates of pen and paper when it comes to initial ideas of what needs to be on the site. Being very quick to get something down and to which others can discuss is a huge plus point of the pen-and-paper approach. It's much quicker to get thoughts out there with pen and paper than going into a design package like Sketch, PhotoShop, or Figma. Pen and paper are, of course, very low-cost and can be thrown away at will.

Wireframes are an important part of planning

From pen and paper, it's on to wireframes. Wireframes give a firm idea of the structure and functionality of the site but are devoid of any colour, type choices or layout. They are like a skeleton feature set. These rough pages can be linked together, showing how the live site would be navigated and what could be on each template. Not every single page needs to be wireframed with rough content. You wouldn't, for instance, wireframe each individual 150 blog posts. In most cases, you would, however, have a blog homepage, a category page and a single blog post wireframe page, which would represent those 150 pages. It must be stressed that wireframes have no design to them and are there for discussion to clarify the features and functionality of the to-be-created website.

Information Architecture(IA)

IA is all about structuring content so it can be found easily. Imagine you are on a weekend break in a city you have never been to. You are likely to resort to a map and street signs to navigate where you want to go. Without these signposts, you would be lost entirely. Think of IA on a website like that. With clear labels, headings, and structure, people would be able to find something they want on the site.