Creating a Plan for Your Website - Organize then Design
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in Web Design on September 4th, 2009
Now you may ask why do I need a website design plan? Well, would you hire a builder for your vacation home before seeing the blue prints? Would you take a trip to Brazil without setting up a travel itinerary? A web site is a similar investment to which you will devote significant time and other resources. Any investment, if it is to succeed, requires detailed planning.
The steps you take before you actually start the design or coding will save you a lot of wasted time, energy and money in the long run. You will be able to determine the major objectives for your web site as a result of defining its purpose and identifying the audience. Stating objectives for a website is similar to setting up goals for a business, in that doing so gives structure and direction. The document you create serves as a reference point throughout your project and keeps the planning and creating phases on target.
Before you start planning your website, take out a pencil and a sheet of paper and do some preliminary research to help you answer some questions:
- Explore other websites and identify those that impress you
- Describe elements that contributed to that positive impression
- Identify means by which information was presented to you - photos, text, video, sound
- Describe what made the information easy to find
- Why would you want to return to the website?
After this exercise, you should have a better idea about the direction you want to take and how you are going to approach your website. Start your planning by creating a site specification document. This is the blue print for your site. The site specification will serve as a reference point and guide as you build your site and will help to maintain your focus. Answer the following questions in your site specification:
- What do you hope to accomplish with your website? Write a two or three paragraph mission statement that briefly states the site’s goals. Your goal may be to increase communication with your audience, increase your online presence, provide a new service or attract new customers and business. No matter what your end game, your website will require lots of work, therefore it is essential that you have viable and achievable goals for your website.
- What do you or your company or organization hope to gain from creating and maintaining a web site?
- How will you judge the success of the website?
- What are the measuring factors you can use to assess the effectiveness of the site?
- How will people find out about your website?
- Who is the target audience?
- What characteristics to they share?
- How will you find out more about them?
- What are the limiting technical factors affecting your site?
Clearly define and understand your websites goals. It is likely that through this discovery process you will want to achieve most if not all of your goals. Prioritize these goals as you define the purpose and carefully consider what type of site you are building. Do you want to communicate information, educate, entertain, or sell a product or service?
Keep in mind, what you want the site to accomplish and what your users want from your site may differ. Adopt your user’s perspective and think about the type of content you’re presenting. Look to the web for examples of how best to present it. As you continue to develop your design plan, choose content, and create your website, keep the purpose at the forefront of your planning and let it guide you as you make those critical decisions.
Dual Monitors: How to Have a Different Wallpaper on Each Desktop
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in How-To on September 3rd, 2009
I would consider myself somewhat of a technofile, so in the tradition of all things nerdy I made sure that both my wife and I had dual monitors. For the longest time we have been stuck in a bleak and boring world where our dual screens displayed the same wallpaper, but that world has come to a glorious end. Read the rest of this entry »
Highlight, Display, Create On-Hover or On-Mouseover Text-Captions Over an Image Using CSS
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in Web Design on August 22nd, 2009
Hah! Do you like the title? It’s a bit long and grandiloquent, but this was an attempt to save you some time. I am hoping I captured enough keywords from all of the searches I did that
The Long Road Home
you managed to find this page. Soh Tanaka is a talented web designer and developer and thankfully he took the time out to write CSS On-Hover Image Captions.
I used his code to successfully implement captions over images using only CSS for EduBasics: Home of Multiplication Hip Hop product page. In all it took about 15 minutes to update the stylesheet, html and upload it to the server. At the end of the day I hope this saved you some time and provided the code you needed. Read the rest of this entry »
How Do I Convert Seconds to Minutes in Excel?
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in Web Analytics on August 13th, 2009
I run across this problem all of the time when I am exporting data out of Google Analytics. I thought it would be a great idea if I finally documented it somewhere I would remember and in the process help you out along the way.
For those of you that don’t know, whenever you export data out of Google Analytics that contains for example, the average time a user is on the site, Google only provides you with the seconds.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tips for Coding HTML Email Newsletters for Multiple Browsers
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in eMail on March 24th, 2009
If you are reading this than you know the joys of trying to code your email for all of the various email applications out there. Outllook, AOL, Gmail, Hotmail each have their own quirks and rendering methodologies and getting your email to display in all of its splendor and glory in each is well…a pain in the ass.
So now that you are reading this article hopefully you’ve stopped banging your head against your desk and I have you attention for a minute or two. Here are the resources I have used and found helpful to aid you in your process. Read the rest of this entry »
Setting Meeting Objectives
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in Planning a Good Meeting on March 10th, 2009
I just finished up a post about Understanding Effective Meeting Agendas and thought it was important to expand on the importance of clearly setting the meeting objectives before you create your meeting agenda. Setting meeting objectives is the first and most important step during the meeting management process. It answers the question of “What do I hope to accomplish when my meeting is done?”.
Before planning the agenda, write down a phrase or several phrases to complete the sentence: By the end of the meeting, I want the group to… Depending on the focus of your meeting, your ending to the sentence might include phrases such as: …be able to list the top three features of our newest product, …have generated three ideas for increasing our sales, …understand the way we do business with customers, …leave with an action plan, …decide on a new widget supplier, or …solve the design problem. Read the rest of this entry »
Understanding Effective Meeting Agendas
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in Planning a Good Meeting on March 10th, 2009
I have been looking at my meeting calendar recently and realized something. I have no idea what half of the meetings are about. I just know I am supposed to show up and that is about it. When I do get there someone just starts talking about stuff. Do I know who this person is? Do I know why I am there? Do I even know what this mysterious stuff is? Hmmm… I think it’s time for my handy dandy sheet of scratch paper and the para-trooping bunnies.
I think sometimes we miss a step and assume that just by calling a meeting a naming it “Meeting to Talk About Stuff”, that it will be enough information to conduct a productive and effective meeting. We need to take a step back and address one of the most important elements, the meeting agenda. Read the rest of this entry »
The Lucky Charms Scenario: How Did My Meeting Get Off Track?
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in Planning a Good Meeting on March 6th, 2009
I thought we were talking about …”Fill in the Blank”. How did we wind up talking about pink hearts, green clovers, and purple horseshoes? It is inevitable. We sit in meetings and as they progress somehow they get further and further from the original topic. Your discussion has gone completely off topic and it is definitely no longer related to decisions that need to be made in the meeting.
So what do you do? You are the facilitator of the meeting and you don’t want to offend anyone or stifle creativity. Here is your life saver, the Parking Lot. That’s right, you did not misread anything. My recommendation is to take that person out to the Parking Lot and well… be creative. No, seriously the Parking Lot and meetings go hand in hand. The Parking Lot ultimately increases meeting productivity and generates a launch pad for future decisions. Read the rest of this entry »
Who Should Come to My Meeting?
Posted by Think.Point.Click. in Planning a Good Meeting on March 6th, 2009
How many of you have been in a meeting and start thinking to yourself, “Ughh, This is such a waste of my time!”, while drawing fanciful doodles of bunny rabbits parachuting out of airplanes or in a meeting mumbling to yourself “I wish John was here. He would do a much better job at explaining this than I can.” I know we have all been there and done that at some point in our careers. Now the question is, what can we do to prevent this and have more productive meetings when it’s our turn to serve up a hot plate o’ meeting and you’re the one asking who should be there?
If you don’t already know meetings are very expensive activities considering the cost of labor and how much can or cannot get done in them. Therefore it is important that serious time and consideration is put into making sure the right people are in the room. Read the rest of this entry »