Web design: Users, Content and Experiences
The idea of web design has changed in recent years. A few yearsago, restrictions and technical difficulties were so high that much effort is put into the technology. There were also essential limitations in the conceptual framework. Could summarize a website was that “work”. A decade later, that goal, without being simpler, is assumed to be achieved. The challenge now is to fulfill its communicative function consistently following standard.
And on communicative function and the standards … we reach a lot of literature. Many of the concepts are not new, were part of the body of theory from disciplines such as communication, cultural anthropology, semiotics, etc. Have simply contextualized, revised and adapted to new communication space.
The user, the protagonist
The emergence of Web 2.0, the so-called social web, where user is the protagonist has been perhaps the most novel and unavoidable reference when we decided to communicate a message in this vast network that has us trapped.
Communicative function centered user, in their emotions and their experiences happens, then, to be top priority in our design approach.We must think and design a web user in mind (our audience), their interests, motivations and constraints. Having this in mind we can get rid of wrong ideas and concepts that, through arrogance or ignorance, just not fulfilling the expectations of our web project.
So, if we obtain satisfactory results, we support our work on two legs: certain of what we want to convey and knowledge of those who want to pass it.
Where to begin?
The first thing to do is think and suggest. Think of our future website at the objectives we seek, as we communicate, the services we provide … and compare our ideas with potential users of our website. This is very useful to sessions brainstorming (Brainstorming) to sit and our potential audience and we will ask you to reflect aloud. It is known to fund the needs of our audience, their tastes and preferences.
If you can not do a session like this, share your ideas with a friend or relative (who fit the profile of your audience) can be very useful.
On the other hand, we will look very closely at those who have already done a similar project that we design. Not that we will copy them, no, it is to see what already works well, good practices, and what does not work.
With all this information will be time to sort all the ideas to define what the objectives that we want to do online, what will our audience and how we will go to it, how we differentiate ourselves from the competition, what content will be most important … From this reflection as we begin to build the “skeleton” of our project starting to take shape.
The skeleton of the web
We begin by defining the information that we provide and the way we’re going to regroup. That is, we will create the containment hierarchy: it is to organize content in a logical and intuitive for the user to quickly know where to click to find the information you are looking for.
When we have the fairly closed content tree (trees, as happens in nature, do not stop growing and become) will decide how to display and distribute information on our website. A nice way to do this is to “draw” each screen: it comes to sketches (also called wire frames) with paper and pencil or using software such as Power Point, Visio, Etc. The ideal is to make a wire frame tree for each page of content, so we have a general vision of the future web.
The wire frames help us think about the best way to display the content, know the most important information, how you navigate through our website … The wire frames have to be realistic and feasible from both a technical and economic and should be used for resolve outstanding questions or issues before proceeding to the design, layout and programming.
Design and layout
And finally it’s time to put a face to the project by appropriate design. And we say adequate because the design must go beyond mere aesthetic function: should support and complement the decisions made and follow the objectives.
Once we design, it’s time to put the pieces through the layout. The layout designer is responsible for the design pieces that fit well with each other and everything looks like it has been presented previously by the designers. If blue is blue, should be blue, not navy, for example, or if there are 5 pixels distance between two photos must be 5 pixels and not 7.
Are we doing well? Usability
The ideal process includes a senior on the way: we have defined the objectives, know the expectations of our users and we’ve made a structural approach and design, but… Are we doing well? It is a good time to propose a new meeting, a new sharing with our audience to see if we understood what we wanted to convey, if we are successful in the design, how to approach the navigation, organization of information … All this will affect the usability (ease of use.)
There are different ways to test the usability of a web: usability testing, interviews, heuristic analysis … The objective is to identify what aspects should be improved to adapt to the logic of users and ensure that when they visit our site to quickly meet the objectives which led them to visit.
Scheduling, launch and monitor
After completing the relevant touches, moves into the programming phase, the more technical part of the project, and test the operation before its publication on the Internet. From this point, begin with outreach and promotion.
And the task of dissemination and promotion, pass, fail, by the positioning in various search engines, Especially in Google through search engine optimization process. To be on the internet have to be in Google, so we must carefully choose keyword with which we want to find when some users type in a search engine and get other websites (blogs, Technorati, Del-ici-ous) Link to our site. Thus, we achieve two things:
- If we are present at other sites more likely it is that we know and that users who never come directly to our site, do so from a website that has our link.
- The more pages link to ours, the better our position in Google, and the easier it will be visible.
A website will never have to “park” without more, we must be aware of what happens there, observe the behavior of our users, either through an analytical measurement (how to move the users, what pages they visit, how long are each page, which contained not look …) or by analysis of their comments, exchanges, concerns, suggestions and act accordingly …: changing some items, add more content, reorganizing information, etc.
Keep in mind that the life of a website is not eternal, needs to evolve at the same time do our goals, audience needs, tools and social behaviors. Therefore, it is desirable to periodically repeat the process broken down in this article to not lose momentum in this dynamic and changing environment as called the social media marketing.
