titleEight Steps to Great Web Design/titleTake control of getting your site actualized by a developer and understand the process it will save you money and get you a site that actually works the intended purpose! p strong1. Knowing your business and how you are currently established in your market.br //strongIn order to author a site that truly meets your requirements; you first need to have a full understanding of your business including your products, and/or services and more importantly their market position. You then have to consider how you want to explain your business and what it offers in 7 seconds or less. Sounds impossible? Well that is the average time that a user will consider the point is this site I searched for?. p strong2. Budget and estimationbr //strongHave a budget in mind and don’t be afraid to let the developers know what it is. In saying this: BE REALISTIC, $500 will never see a great web site created, nor will they be anything left in the bank to market it. p strong3. The creative processbr //strongBe armed with example sites and more importantly the elements of the site you like so they can achieve an understanding of what you would like to see on your site and also what you find frustrating about other sites. This will construct a good profile and realise not only what type of site to actualize for you but your tolerance to colours, animations, layouts etc. for your requirements which will allow for fast development. The more interaction and information you confer them in the beginning the more time you will save everybody in the long run by getting what you want 1st time round. Check with the designers on how many rounds of changes come with the contract, most will allow for a total conceptual redesign only once and 2 rounds of changes after that. p strong4. Production and Contentbr //strongAfter the home page design is made, the developers will more than likely take the general layout of this concept and then formulate the inner page template. It is this template that will be duplicated for most of your pages for your site.br /Present your content in a pre-proofed word processed document; don’t become too creative with the document fonts etc. as these will not be kept when the content is copied into the code of the site. It is suggested that you do use bolding, underlining, headings and sub heading though ,as these highlights are transferred into the site and are essential later on in not only getting the point across to the reader but for Search Engine Optimisation.br/One last tip for content; present a decent amount of content but present it in a way that a reader may get a summary of what you are trying to present across in the 1st couple of paragraphs and an image or to. The rest of the paragraphs that get into finer details ARE FOR GOOGLE ! p strong5. Development Programming and CMSbr //strongIf your website contains Content Managed Areas (CMS) or has any other dynamic sections the developers will wrap your design around a content management program such as Joomla or Drupal or they may have a custom built system. Make sure that you get to see how the CMS system works on another site they have developed or an example site they may have. it is essential that you know that you can utilize and know the system when your site is complete. p strong6. Testing and trainingbr //strongWe work closely with the developers to test your site especially if there are any CMS or special programs that have been made for you. You can guarantee if it is has just been written for you then it will not operate 100% first time round. This is a where things can get ugly in the process you must understand the way the program operates and test it as if you were normal website user. If it doesn’t make sense to you, chances are it won’t make sense to your audience. Make sure you test your website on more than just your browser, try to test it on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. All of these browsers are on the internet for free! p strong7. Launch - going livebr //strongWhen the developers are ready to bring your site onlive make sure you have completed the above testing step until you are content that this website is the best representation of your business / product it can be. Remember even though you can change things after going live it is still a poor reflection on your business if there are spelling mistakes or broken images when you launch. p strong8. Marketingbr //strongThere is little point in having a website if nobody visits it, make sure as part of you contract you have considered search engine optimisation and or search engine marketing as part of your website build. This is the absolute most important factor of the whole process. If you are the only one looking at your site then you are in trouble.Remember Search Engine Optimisation is about 30% Onsite (getting your site correct for Search Engine to index correctly) and 70% Promotion. Any developer who tells you otherwise hasn’t been in the industry too long. p For more information about web design, contact Web Site Blue. Our a href=http://www.websiteblue.com/services.phpweb designers/a understand marketing as well as design.