clipped from: www.webdesignfromscratch.com   

The complete no-nonsense step-by-step guide to designing web sites

Here's my breakdown of the ideal web design process.

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I know a lot of people are going to read this and shout "That's not the best way to go about designing web sites!!"

All I can say is: this is the essence of the process that works best for me.

I offer it in the hope that maybe bits of it will work for you too.

 

I've been creating web sites for 10 years, and I've got much more successful at it over that time. And I've come into contact with lots of very clever and complex software development processes, many of which don't produce very good results.

This is the typical process I use today on most of the sites I do (of all sizes). It focuses on getting clear on what you're doing before you start, and staying clear while you work swiftly towards a good solution.

Overview

  1. Know what you're doing
  2. Know what the site needs to do
  3. Know what the site's visitors want
  4. Get a good picture of the personality and style of the web site
  5. Sketch out highly successful scenarios
  6. Organise views into a site map
  7. Sketch the essential features & look
  8. Map your visitors' attention
  9. Arrange the visual elements to work together