Planning a sites structure is important
So I get a call from a friend, who’s also a web designer, asking if I can help out with integrating a site into Expression Engine CMS. He showed me a draft of the site, and on the surface it looked straightforward enough. However, when we dig a little deeper, it started to get a lot more complicated.
The site is for a business that wants to use it to promote their products, together with a few extras like ecards (for spreading the word) and a competition. In the normal run of things this wouldn’t present any problems but as we got stuck into the build the lack of planning started to makes itsself known.
Not understanding how web sites work
The overall concept, presentation and customer consultation was done by a graphic designer. It looks nice but it was pretty obvious he didn’t know much about structure and flow of information, for instance some important navigational links only revealed themselves when you visited a certain section of the site. Now, in my book, if a section of a site is important it deserves a top level link, burying it away won’t get it noticed very much!
First we want it, now we don’t
The end customer also displayed a lack of forethought. We spent many hours building and entire section of the site, only to be told that it wasn’t in fact needed at all, and there are a list of late changes that have been thust upon us at the 11th hour even though the site is due to go live on Friday 13th Feb (maybe that’s relevant somehow!). Add to that various late text copy updates. Why do people always leave things till the last moment?
Lessons to be learnt
- Have a clear idea of exactly what you want - plan in advance!!!
- Prepare your text copy in advance, don’t leave changes till the last moment
- Use a web designer to advise on site structure and presentation of content
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