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Hooooold on a second… weren’t there supposed to be five steps to planning? How did “building” make it into the planning steps when it should come after? Ha! Bet you know that building could be part of planning, too. Of course, this is building in a different way than you might expect.
The planning process is a little like that old song where the shin bone’s connected to the knee bone… and the knee bone’s connected to… um, something or other. Fortunately you don’t need to remember your anatomy but you will be building a connection with your wireframe, which you just built to connect with your sitemap.
Once you know what pages will be on the site, the next step is to figure out what’s going to be on those pages. This is where the wireframe comes in, sometimes referred to as “information architecture”. It’s still a paper-and-pencil exercise, but it’s far more detailed and it builds on the previous two steps.
Building a sitemap is a good old fashioned paper-and-pencil exercise. Ok, maybe a good old-fashioned keyboard-and-mouse exercise. Whatever your tools, it is a drawing phase. You will need to sit down with your developer and decide exactly what your site structure is from a high-level perspective.
It’s common – and unfortunate – practice to start building a website based on a conference call and a couple of notes about colors, pages and content. With so many DIY web tools that make the process sound as simple as a drag here and a drop there, many businesses fail to recognize the power of planning.
This series will explore six simple tips that can help you use your site’s design to your advantage. This tip is the first step on your way to a well-designed website: Good design starts with good planning.
