19 June 2009
How to think your website through to produce a better design brief.

One of the harshest put-downs I’ve heard is the sarcastic riposte “Oh, very impressive! Joined-up talking!” In fact, though, joined-up anything is usually a good thing. Linking things together logically is almost always a key factor to success and this is particularly true when applied to businesses.

The process of designing a new website is just one example where joining the steps up doesn’t just make good sense – it’s practically essential. So what is “Joined-up thinking?”

Put another way it is “Thinking things all the way through” and though a good web design company can help with this it is really more successful when a client does it by themself.

The starting point should be what you want from the site – and that’s not as dumb a question as it might seem. Is the site there to inform? Generate enquiries & leads? Generate direct sales and thus revenue? OR might you want it to do several or all of these things?

It’s important to be straight on this point from the outset – and it will help if you can communicate clearly to your designers “I would like my site to…..”

Immediately after this, though, needs to come the question “What will my customers/clients want to use the site for?” Hopefully the answer to this question will tie into the previous answer. For example: “They will visit the site to check availability of my products, place an order and make payment” ties in with “I’d like my site to generate revenue through sales”.

But in addition, clients may wish to track the progress of their order. They may wish to contact you with a query or to make a return, or to ask about a product they’d like but cannot find. You, in the meantime, will need a site where you can fully manage your stock, track orders, add, change, delete listings and probably send out mailshots to customers periodically to boost sales.

The trick here is not to stop with the first, obvious answer to the two key questions but to explore them all the way through – until you have a detailed idea of what you want/need from the site and what your customers or clients want/need. Armed with this, you are then in a position to give your web design company a clear brief which, when met, will leave you with a site that perfectly fits everyone’s needs.

You can usually tell when a site has benefited from a joined-up thought process. It tends to be easy to use and to offer that little bit more – like a formal ladies wear website that offers a prom & wedding planning sheet and budget guide or a town council website that offers full minutes of all its meetings for public reference.

So, to summarize, take that little bit extra thinking time because if you do, your design brief will be that much more focused and, ultimately, your website will be more successful.