Build a Website – Part Deux
Posted on July 24, 2009
In part one of this series I laid out the basics of project mgmt as I see them and briefly mentioned my use of FreeMind to do some brain storming / mind mapping. There are of course many resources and utilities out there that can be used instead of FreeMind – but this is the first one I found years ago and it is what I am used too.
If you have any specific links then please leave a comment or better still, include them in the forum post.
Moving along then.
Site Design.
Unless you are a designer or have very clear ideas on the what you want and how it will look then this aspect of the process will likely be the toughest. One caveat I will throw in here is that you really need to have an idea of the content so that you can either picture it in place or else you will need to utilise place holder text and pictures.
With appreciation of site design being such an individual thing I approach this aspect by crowd sourcing it. I take a cross section of the Church membership (youth, OAP’s, singles, leadership, etc) and ask them to note down web sites they like and equally sites they don’t like. Once you have these you need to spend a bit of time drawing up a tick (or hit) list of what is / isn’t popular.
The list needs to include items such as:
- Entry page
- Overall layout – is it centralised?
- Screen resolution required
- Full screen yes / no?
- Style, type and depth of navigation
- Colour usage – how many / consistency
- Logo / banner / tag line usage
- Content of menu structure
- etc …
The exact list will vary according to the end project / client but the ultimate goal here is to narrow down the type of site you want. For example do you want the site to sit central on the screen with a horizontal fly out menu structure? Or do you prefer it to be left aligned and have a vertical menu structure using strong clashing colours.
Certain things like the colour choice is made easier if the Church already has a strong sense of brand. Just have this replicated through to the website. My Church did this with their business arm when they setup an eCommerce site (GatesofPraise.co.uk) and the overall design and colours used mirror the hard print versions they’ve used for years.
Beyond the crowd sourcing process I also utilise sites like Church Beauty, or Great Church Websites (good search engine for narrowing down design needs) or even Dean Peters Heal Your Church Website is an excellent read. Don’t forget to pay a visit to Jacob Nielsen’s Usability and Web Design site – usetit.com – lots of good useful information to help you in planning your layout, etc.
One thing I can’t stress enough though – keep feeding back to the leadership team before going ahead with anything. This is something I’ve learnt the hard way (not with the current design process but in other aspects) as you don’t want to have to back track due to the bosses not liking what’s come up.
But let me also add a further caveat … if you believe in the idea / design strongly enough then take your best arguments with you – especially if you know that the ideas coming from the other side won’t work or will look bad. Just remember to keep a cool head and be prepared to walk away graciously.
Looking back at this post I’m going to leave content creation to the next post …
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I like this…
“Just remember to keep a cool head and be prepared to walk away graciously.”
Good advice, I know exactly what you mean