Web Administration: Web Resources
Building a Web Site
Project Definition | Information Architecture | Design & Testing
Starting a Site
Goals
What exactly are you trying to communicate or accomplish? What outcome will make you feel that your site is a success?
Audience
With what exact groups of people are you trying to communicate?
Content
What types of material could your site provide that would both attract your audience and meet your goals?
Resources
How much time and money can you dedicate up front and over time to create and maintain your site?
Content Development
The content of your site will most likely be a combination of information that you currently have and information you will have to create.
Project Definition
content taken from http://www.webstyleguide.com/site/basic_structures.html
Planning
First of all, you must determine who the audience is for your site. This is critical, because many design and content decisions depend on this. Does your target audience access the Net from work, school or home? How fast is their Internet connection? Do they want to be informed or entertained? Make sure you know the answers to these types of questions from the outset.
Your site must be well organized, both for the benefit of your visitors and to make it easier to maintain. Map out your site in storyboard or schematic form, perhaps as a flow chart. Consider using index cards to represent the prospective web pages. You can rearrange them very quickly. It really helps to have some way to visualize the structure, whether you're working alone, with colleagues or professionals.
Information Architecture
Web sites are built around basic structural themes. These fundamental architectures govern the navigational interface of the Web site and mold the user's mental models of how the information is organized. Three essential structures can be used to build a Web site: sequences, hierarchies, and webs.
Site Structure
Sequences
The simplest way to organize information is to place it in a sequence. Sequential ordering may be chronological, a logical series of topics
progressing from the general to the specific, or alphabetical, as in indexes, encyclopedias, and glossaries. Straight sequences are the most
appropriate organization for training sites, for example, in which the reader is expected to go through a fixed set of material and the only
links are those that support the linear navigation path:
Hierarchies
Information hierarchies are the best way to organize most complex bodies of information. Because Web sites are usually organized around a single
home page, hierarchical schemes are particularly suited to Web site organization. Hierarchical diagrams are very familiar in corporate and
institutional life, so most users find this structure easy to understand. A hierarchical organization also imposes a useful discipline on your
own analytical approach to your content, because hierarchies are practical only with well-organized material.
Webs
Weblike organizational structures pose few restrictions on the pattern of information use. In this structure the goal is often to mimic associative
thought and the free flow of ideas, allowing users to follow their interests in a unique, heuristic, idiosyncratic pattern. This organizational
pattern develops with dense links both to information elsewhere in the site and to information at other sites. Although the goal of this
organization is to exploit the Web's power of linkage and association to the fullest, weblike structures can just as easily propagate confusion.
Ironically, associative organizational schemes are often the most impractical structure for Web sites because they are so hard for the user to
understand and predict. Webs work best for small sites dominated by lists of links and for sites aimed at highly educated or experienced users
looking for further education or enrichment and not for a basic understanding of a topic.
Page Structure
Wireframe
A wireframe is a way to take notes in a very structured way. Instead of drawing boxes and arrows and notes on your legal
pad, you can brainstorm by actually creating a clickable web page. It doesn't actually do anything, but it
demonstrates the flow of how the site will function. When we wireframe, we're simply trying to understand the user flow.
Define key user tasks
Test wireframes with paper prototypes
Content Structure
Analyze existing content
Outline content development
Create content delivery plan