Website Design

Planning a web design project from scratch

Planning a web design project from scratch

I can imagine what it must be like to be a newcomer to web design and trying to get a new website setup on a sensible budget. Planning how to approach the design of your website with the many options available can be a daunting task, even for someone with a degree of experience.

The place to really start is to think about what purpose the website is going to serve. Here are a few design/functional considerations to think over -

Am I offering a basic web brochure or do I plan to sell something?
Am I offering a product or service or both?
How comfortable am I with doing my own design and updating it?
What features and functions will I provide to my visitors?
Is my target audience one which might respond well to community building, in the form of blogs and forums, or not?
Where do I see my website headed in the future, say in 12 months then 24 months, do I need some scalability?

If you plan to throw a quick company brochure together and forget about it, I would suggest using a free HTML editor, registering a low cost hosting plan and going from there.

I wouldn't recommend using a shared or free hosting plan, since it's not going to help your chances of getting picked up by Google or any of the other search engines. You can buy good hosting for less than $100 / yr and it's worth the investment.

If you are looking for features and functions that are scalable, I would recommend -

1 - For a products/services type website - Joomla CMS

2 - For a community/blog website - Wordpress

JOOMLA - lends itself to future scalability and options for expanding the features of your website through its many plugin modules.[more on joomla web design] [more on Joomla modules and plugins for extended features]

WORDPRESS - is easier to learn and use than Joomla, but you'll hit a roadblock if you plan to add more functionality beyond a basic website with blog.

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There are many factors to consider when approaching the design of any new website. The most important we feel is building your website on a scalable platform. It's virtually impossible to sit down at the start of a design project and predict the direction your website will take in the long term. When we first started to build websites we had no idea that blogs and social media integration would be a pre requisite of any new website in 2010. In fact, blogs and social media were barely invented back then!

So, always consider that you might have to add to your website in the future, some form of functionality, a new look/feel, advance module or whatever. That's why we try to approach all new projects using Joomla as the design platform. Joomla is a powerful open source content management system that has a wide range of plug-in modules, allowing your websites functionality to grow as your business grows.

Hosting is also important. People think it's the last consideration and they can simply pick up and move to another host if they outgrow their present host company. That's fine until you start moving MY Sql databases and other script applications that are setup to a specific set of server parameters. So always host with a reputable company who've been around for a while. It doesn't mean you have to pay more, we offer excellent hosting packages for $9 month. We are resellers for a major web hosting company with whom we have maintained a flawless working relationship for almost 10 years.

Once you've established a platform and host company you'll want to find a good designer. There are many to choose from and it sometimes helps to find a local company if you feel your project is quite complex and person to person interaction would be beneficial. (This is rarely the case). Almost every web designer will claim to have "SEO" experience. That's often complete nonsense. Those claims are made because it's expected of them, but few actually have the in depth knowledge it takes to design with SEO as a focus factor.

Ongoing support is hard to gauge from the outset, it isn't until you've worked with a company for a while that you'll really know what their support is all about. Checkout a couple references if you can, otherwise it's taking a gamble. The good thing about having your website built on a Joomla platform is that you won't be locked-into any particular design company. If they let you down you can shop around.

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