Too many times I have heard this from a client, “I need a website.” and often my response is “why?” This question is usually met with a very quizzical look from the client.
Shouldn’t I want to make a site for them? It is my job after all, isn’t it? And doesn’t EVERYBODY have a website? Unfortunately, these are the worst reasons to create a site.
Web Design in the corporate and marketing world has been around for the last 15-20 years but a lot of people still don’t get that a website is not some mythical creation that will solve all of their problems. It is simply a TOOL that will help accomplish a specific goal or set of goals. Without goals in mind for your site, you’re just wasting your time and money.
Why having goals in mind is important.
Every web site, and individual page for that matter, should have some tangible goal attached to it; Whether it is to guide the user to buy a specific product, or to provide them with information. This goal should then be tied to a task that you want the user to accomplish while on the page (or site).
It is important to have all goals defined in the initial phases of a design so that all of the design elements refer back to that goal or set of goals.
For example, if my goal is to increase sales of a specific product (or products), I would need to have all my content, navigation, and graphical elements designed in such a way to point the user in the direction of buying that product. Items like the “Buy” button would have to be prominent, navigation should be simplistic, and the content should be clear and succinct.
However, if the goal is to provide the user with a how-to guide, then my entire design strategy changes to a more text-heavy/detailed type of page. If appropriate, detailed images should be a part of the design showing the parts/functionality of that product.
These are two completely different goals, each with a completely different design approach.
Far too often in web development, the page is designed and in place before the goal is fully defined. This usually results in pages and sites that try to do too much (or too little) and the results are typically poor.
The 40-20-40 Approach to Design:
When I’m working on a project, I typically like to follow the 40-20-40 engineering plan.
During a project you should spend 40% of your time on requirements analysis and design, 20% on actually coding/developing the product, and 40% on testing the finished code/site.
Often times I’ve seen the design and the testing phases cut just to get a product out as fast as possible. While this typically met short-term goals (on schedule and on budget) it often led to long-term side effects (things are harder to update and bugs are harder to find due to the “rushed” code or design) or worse, the finished product did not meet all the goals of the business.
Defining goals, and a design approach to meet those goals, should take up about 40% of the development cycle. This is the crucial time to ask questions, put a lot of forethought into the design, and think about the requirements/resources that will be needed to maintain the project once it is launched.
On the flip side, 40% of project’s time should be set aside for testing and feedback before it is released to the public. This avoids having the user find problems on your site before you do, which could potentially hurt your goal conversion rates.
The coding and development phase is the easy part and really should be the quickest part of the whole process. If the proper time was devoted to the requirements and design phase, the coding portion of the project will typically come in ahead of schedule and under budget.
The other benefit of defined goals – measuring them.
The best part of setting goals is that with a solid analytics process in place, you can then measure them.
Google Analytics allows you to see how your new design reacts in comparison to your old design. It also allows you to find bottlenecks and issues that can then be fixed or experimented with so that you can constantly keep improving your conversion rate.
Without clearly defined goals, it’s tough to measure or make improvements on anything.
Conclusion:
Everything about your site (and your pages) needs to point back to the goals that you set up early on in the process. The more work you put into flushing out and designing for your goals, the easier it will be for your site to meet these goals. Its really that simple.
Sites that are built before all of the clients goals are properly defined usually end up in disaster and can cost the client a lot more time and money to fix the site so that it “conforms” to these new goals.
josephbm91 on 
