Website Development Series: Phase 2- Planning and Design
NATIV3 shared last week about the first phase of website development, discovery and research. This week, we start getting our hands dirty with planning and design. In this phase, clients start seeing the seeds of their site take root.
Planning and design begins with designing a site map. These maps help create the general outline of the site, including required pages and their subpages. It helps clients and designers stay focused in their pursuit of creating content, as well as creating the opportunity to add or eliminate pages as necessary. Once a site map and all of its pages have been approved, a wire map is created. These are very basic sketches of how the website will look to a user. This may include symbols to dictate the placement of certain pieces of text, but other than that, they are without art and color. These simply work to describe where those elements of design will be in relation to other elements on the page. This can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks.
The design aspect of this phase begins when art, logos, and designs are created for your page. At this point, a graphic designer may have been hired to design drawn elements and a photographer may have been hired to avoid using stock images. Color and white space schemes will be decided upon. Once all of the individual elements of the design are approved, they can come to together on the page.
The final piece of planning and design is actually incorporating the design elements on the site and sending to the client for approval. This process can often take upwards of 3 months as the approval cycle is run over and over again. The goal here is to secure a sure-plan for every artistic aspect of the site before any coding is done. Because coding is a lengthy and difficult process, prior approval for design is crucial. Time spent assuring that the website is both satisfactory for the customer and do-able by the website design firm in this phase will save time later as the launch date approaches.
If you’re ready to pursue website greatness, to stand out from the masses, and to create something beautiful, functional, and fun, NATIV3 has your development needs covered. For more information on the process of website development, check out our ebook.