Website design 102

Website design objectives - phase one

Be generous. Determine exactly what your site needs to achieve. It's vital to establish this as early in the process as possible as the further down the design road you travel the more difficult it gets to make changes. Don't let yourself be influenced by unnecessary factors. The look of your site should be completely unconsidered at this point. If you have corporate design guidelines to adhere to worry about how to do this after decisions on site objectives have been made.

For example, let's say your organisation manufactures, distributes and sells pet food through it's own stores and third parties. The site objectives could include informing visitors about manufacturing process information, product options, pet benefits, prices, a store finder, stock levels and more rudimentary information such as how and who to contact, company history and board member profiles.

The thing to consider at this stage is there are many, many areas of interest that may need to be included in a website design structure - don't limit your view of this to just your own ideas.

Discuss the project with as many people as possible at this stage of the design process. Knowing your marketing department wants visitors to have access to the latest TV and press ads from your home page is fine so long as you don't discover this two weeks after the site goes live when they've finally had a chance to see it.

Brainstorm, send out questionnaires, actively seek input and make sure everyone has their say. It's much easier to get people's support for a website if they feel a sense of ownership. It's far better to have too much information as oppose to too little, after all, your task is made a lot easier if you only have to decide what needs to stay.

Next: Website design objectives - phase two

Mighty Media are a full service multimedia company and have employed an in-house team of website designers since 1997. Our practical, marketing oriented approach to website design has resulted in numerous site launches that succeed in driving qualified, targetted leads to our client's businesses.

Mighty Media is regarded as one of the premier Buckinghamshire website design agencies with a track record in corporate communications that forms the underlying foundation of their work.

Established for over 25 years, Mighty Media began making TV commercials and later diversified into the corporate video production sector working with household names such as Procter & Gamble, Mars, Nationwide Building Society and other familiar names. With a strong background in internal and external communications Mighty Media progressed into new media production. Mighty Media now specialise in CD-Rom design and production, e-learning solutions, intranet design, extranet design, video production and website design.

Based in Bourne End on the border of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire Mighty Media now provide website design and online marketing services to businesses from all over the UK.

• Amersham, Ascott, Ashendon and Aylesbury
• Beaconsfield, Bellingdon, Bourne End, Buckingham and Burnham
• Chalfont, Chesham, Chorleywood, Cliveden, Cookham and Cores End
• Denham and Desborough
• Flackwell Heath and Furlong
• Gerrards Cross
• Hambleden, Hazlemere and High Wycombe
• Iver
• Lane End
• Marlow and Milton Keynes
• Primrose Hill and Princes Risborough
• Slough, Stoke Mandeville, Stoke Poges and Stokenchurch
• Taplow
• Wooburn and Wycombe

• Bedfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire
• Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall and Cumberland
• Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset and Durham
• Essex
• Gloucestershire
• Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire
• Kent
• Lancashire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire
• Middlesex
• Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland and Nottinghamshire
• Oxfordshire
• Rutland
• Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey and Sussex
• Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire and Worcestershire
• Yorkshire