Sketch your site design on paper

Another task that can greatly aid your designer in creating your web site is for you to sketch on paper the kinds of things you want, with as many specifics as you can manage.

Some of the content areas to consider when sketching out a site design include the number of pages, specific types of information, and a particularly detailed specification of any interactive areas. These might include database lookup, content searching, email feedback forms, online registration for customers or products, games and amusements, file and documentation download areas and online transaction requirements.

To illustrate, let's consider the design of a web site for a swimsuit store we'll call "Linda's Bikini Shop". Linda has a small but thriving business in a touristy area of the city and has been keeping an eye on the web and thinking about jumping online for a while. She sees her main web audience as new customers and wants to offer a site that includes up-to-date local surf conditions, weather links, articles on fashion, and a family area with information on how to teach children to swim. In addition, she carries suits from 17 major manufacturers in a variety of sizes, a total of 400+ products. Ideally, she'd like to actually accept credit cards and sell products right off the web site, rather than receiving faxes or telephone calls.

Being a savvy person, she's started sketching out the specifics of her site and identified that she wants to offer content searching ("visitors should be able to look for a specific kind of swimsuit in our line, should be able to find specific articles in our article collection and should be able to request the surf report for their favorite beach"), email feedback ("visitors can send me mail about the site and about specific kinds or sizes of swimsuits they seek"), online registration ("for notification of sales") and online transactions ("so people can buy stuff off the site").

One of the best things that you can do for your web designer to ensure you're all on the same track is to spend time exploring other sites on the Web to get ideas for your own. Write down their URL and a note or two about what you did or didn't like about the specific site. The designer can then visit the same places and start to understand whether you like open designs with lots of blank areas, flashy animation, complex background graphics, lots of short pages versus a small number of long pages, etc.

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