Discussion on:

10 ways to make your Web site design project go smoothly

Good to see a sensible approach, not just a dive in and hope methodology to web design.

Glad it makes sense to you! Sadly, it was the result of too many "dive in and hope" experiences.

J.Ja

Good to remind me again (and again) of the mistakes I fall into, and also to explain in a short clear format to the others involved, the reasons behind these recommendations.
Graham / Switzerland

by content. I have now started taking payment up front.

What is web site design? I know it describes the word project, but what is it and what does it include?

To most of the industry it's the graphic design, supporting accessibility, usability and #(sometimes) SEO requirements. This covers everything from the look and feel of the pages as a whole down to the individual buttons, etc., that make up the pages.

What it's not is organising how the user experience should flow - that's down to a well defined information architecture based on the intuitive and/or logical progression of a user from the home page of the site to the content they want to find. In large, complex site's information architecture is often supported by usability architecture to help plan the user journey. In any case neither one of these is web design, but they should be used to inform the designer of the parameters in which they should work - to set boundaries to their brief.

Most web designers AREN'T information architects. They concentrate on the aesthetic rather than semantic aspects of the site and you often find beautifully designed sites with misleading or confused navigation, or lack of attention to SEO and accessibility.

This post covers points that are far too basic and obvious to be of use to anyone in a real PM position. The real issue in PM is managing expectations, internally and externally (client), as well as putting a lot of effort into the specification/architecture process. Once that has been approved internally and externally, if it is very detailed, you're basically on your own to manage the thing.

I've never heard of a home page mulled over for months... where on earth does that happen??

I agree that the PM is at the core of this. But at the same time, a lot of companies don't use PMs too much either, and that is more who this was aimed at.

And the home page things... it happens anywhere that the CEO decided to inject themselves into the process, but had diferent ideas from the Marketing department who officially owned the home page, who had ideas that conflicted with the SEO consultant, who had ideas that conflicted with the usability consultant, meanwhile, the IT guys wanted to do something else that was more "fun". Sad, eh?

J.Ja

Hey Justin-
There's a 'tech-snob' on every thread regarding every subject...it's probably best to ignore them. The subject of your reply says it all.
Most everyone here learned something from your article as did I...
Thanks for writing it.

"Politely keep people without a clue out of the process..." LOL! Easier said than done, but it's true! If I had to single out one tip, it would be the wireframe design before coding. It does help. A LOT.
Thanks, keep up the good work!

In stead of paper prototyping you can use software like Axure or iRise to create prototypes. They very closely resemble the real thing. It's great to make stakeholders enthousiastic about the project, and to communicate requirements with people and elict requirements from people who aren't at home in the requirements process.

Interesting insights, but there are many conflicting issues here that are present on many projects that I've seen, including #1, which may or may not include a clueless manager or client to ensure mediocrity throughout. #7 is the best piece of advice that the rest of the article should follow. @creativcatalyst

As I said above - dead download link for the pdf of this article

I can access it just fine. What browser do you use? Did you try to clear cache? Try chrome it should work better since the link is loading just fine

Derek Balldwig
CEO @ HGH Reviews