Web Concepts_Introduction to Website Planning

The Process
WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

Web Development Project Lifecycle

CLIENT
- gives a list of their
needs called
requirements
- Requirements may
include search
capability, tabbed
menu navigation,
branding
requirements, mobile
site design, CMS
integration, etc.
DEVELOPMENT TEAM
- interprets requirements
and breaks it to smaller
tasks
- team then prepares a
specification
- Specification may contain
page layout sketches,
audience definition,
technical requirements
Requirements and Specifications

Who is the client for the site?
Can you write a two- or three-paragraph mission statement that briefly states the site’s goals?
What do you envision as the goal of the site?
What do you (or your company or organization) hope to gain from creating and maintaining a
web site?
What are the requirements for the web site?
Website Specifications

Are the requirements feasible? (do you have the skills?)
How will you judge the success of the site? (how can you say that your site is effective?)
Who is the target audience? (what’s their common characteristics?)
What are the limiting technical factors?
What is the budget? (are the target dates realistic and achievable?)
Is this a new site or an upgrade? (learn from the first version if this is an upgrade)
What HW and SW are needed?
Website Specifications

Information Design & Taxonomy Creation
Information Design
o based on user analysis
o content goal and content navigation
Taxonomy Creation
o Taxonomy is a classification and naming of contents in a hierarchy
o The taxonomy of the site structures the topic hierarchy and navigation

Identify your Content Goal
Examine closely what type of site you are building
Your objectives and your users’ objectives may be quite different
Adopt your users’ perspective
Think about the type of content you’re presenting and look to the web for examples of how
best to present it
o Billboard
o Publishing
o Portal
o Special Interest
o Wikis
o RSS
o Virtual Gallery
o Product Support
o E-commerce
o Catalog
o Online Shopping
o Intranet
o Blog o Social Networking o Extranet

Analyze your Audience
Produce an audience definition:
o What is it that users want when they come to your site?
o How can you attract them and entice them to return for repeat visits?
o What type of computer and connection speed do your typical visitors have?
o Who are the typical members of your audience?
o Why do people come to your site?
User Feedback Form
Web Analytics
 statistics gathered by web servers

Who are the typical members of your
audience?
• Are they male or female?
• What level of education do they have?
• What is their reading and vocabulary level?
• What level of technical aptitude do they have?
Why do people come to your site?
• Do they want information?
• Do they want to download files?
• Are they looking for links to other web sites?
User Feedback Form

STATISTICS:
- user activity on your web site
- where your visitors come from and
- which pages they like the best
Reporting tools can analyze the statistics
Web Analytics

Identify Technology Issues & Accessibility Constraints
Where are users geographically located?
What might be their technology level?
Test in different environments and with different technologies
Consider the physical capabilities of your users

Site Storyboard
Flowchart that shows the structure, logic and taxonomy behind the content presentation
and navigation choices you offer
Different structures:
1. Linear
2. Tutorial
3. Web
4. Hierarchical
5. Cluster
6. Catalog
Linear structure

Tutorial
Hierarchical
Cluster
Catalog
Web

Graphic Design & Page Template Creation
Designers prepare sketches and page mock-ups to represent page layouts
Mock-ups or Wireframes?
o Mock-ups can be easily edited based on feedback
o Wireframes document a more stable page design
o Wireframes offer a more complete view of what the final design will look like

Construction & Content Development
Construction begins when the design stage is mostly complete
includes technical development of the site
some testing will occur during this stage

Development Team
Project managers
HTML developers
Designers
Writers and information designers
Application developers
Database administrators
Server administrators

Naming Convention for your Files
Don’t use spaces in your filenames; use underscores instead.
o Example: Instead of about web design.html, use about_web_design.html
Avoid all special characters. Stick to letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores
Use all lowercase letters for your filenames
Index.html is usually the main page filename

Naming Convention for your URLs
Complete or Partial URL (Uniform Resource Locator)?
o Complete URLs are the unique address of a file on the web
o Partial URLs for files that reside on your own computer or server

Directory Structure
You build a site on a development computer but host it on a different computer
The files for your web site must be transferred from the development computer to the
hosting computer
Your file structure must be transferable
Use relative paths to indicate file locations
Folder Structures:
1. Single
2. Basic Hierarchical
3. Segregated Hierarchical

Single Basic Hierarchical Segregated Hierarchical

Quality Assurance & User Testing
Quality assurance validates the technology of the site
User testing validates the design
Cross-platform testing and usability testing ensure users can access content easily
Browsers, operating systems, devices, connection speeds, display resolutions, links

Publishing & Promotion
The site is published to the web
Promotion of the site begins

Choosing a Web Hosting Service Provider
The web hosting service hosts your web site
Select a web hosting service appropriate to the size of your web site
Check for the following features
o Accessible technical support
o E-mail addresses
o SQL database support
o Secure socket layer support

Registering a Domain Name
Domain name hides the actual path

Uploading your Files with FTP
To publish pages on the web, you must send your HTML code, images, and other files to the
web server
FTP software let you transfer the files
Some HTML-editing software has built-in FTP
There are many shareware and freeware FTP programs to choose from

Ongoing Maintenance
Starts when the site goes live and continues
throughout the life of the project
Keeping content fresh is vital
Develop a feedback form

Thank you!
IT4101 – WEB CONCEPTS

Web Concepts_Introduction to Website Planning

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