When a new client asks whether I could build them a website, I say “Sure, what do you want on it?”… this is usually followed by some tumbleweeds blowing across the prairie i.e. a long empty silence, then a “Erm, no idea”.

These are the steps I go through with the client to help figure out what their website should consist of.

The frst stage involves a few questions:

Having answered all these questions you should arrive at a list of information and or facilities that your website should include.

Information Architecture

The next step is to think about the most common sense way of organising the information on the site – but do it from the users perspective. A good way of doing this is get each of the items you’ve identified written down on a separate piece of paper, and then group them together, or even better, get someone else to do it.

Depending on the size of the site, and the amount of content, it may or may not be an idea to organise the pages into categories or a hierarchy.

If there is enough content on the site to warrant a hierarchy, higher level pages normally provide more general information about the category and generally include summaries of and links to more detailed specific information in child pages.

Note, not all pages may belong in the hierarchy. For example a main tree structure for the main content pages of the site and a supplementary group of pages for things like corporate info, contact details etc.

You should now be able to create a sitemap.

Content Plan

Try to flesh out the information on the pages, think about the goals of your site and offer the user the choice of achieving that goal at each stage or finding out more information if they’re not quite ready yet. What images might you need to support the content.

Navigation

Think about the best way of representing the navigation on the site based on what you’ve come up with for the sitemap. This is important now because the navigation method you decide on will often influence the layout of the site that you need to define in the next stage.

Things that determine the best way of implementing the navigation on a site are for example, if there are fewer top level pages, a horizontal menu might be more appropriate. These could be implemented as tabs, like in a traditional desktop application, or a menu with dynamic drop down sub menus.

Alternatively if you have lots of top level pages, a vertical menu down the left or right of the page might be more appropriate.

You can always have a mixture of navigation styles too, e.g. a horizontal menu across the top for top level pages, and then subpages within this section can be accessed by a smaller menu on the left or right within a sidebar or just within the content area.

Layout

Now consider the layout of pages on the site. Most sites always have a header and footer. The middle section sometimes has a left and/or right sidebar with a main content section. The middle section can be different on different pages of the site if required, but its generally best to keep it as similar as possible.

A sidebar may or may not be necessary. It can help identify certain content is supplementary to the main content or may contain the menu amongst other things.

Finally

Its one thing planning a successful website, but how will you know, once its built, it is successful? Obviously if its making you a fortune and you never have to work again, then obvously its successful, but not all websites are like that, intentionally or otherwise. So, how you are going to measure its success? The type of success metrics you have for your site are defined by the objectives you set, so if you are selling something, it could be X amount of sales after a certain time period. If you are after signups, etc etc.