1 oustanding ideas...

You are right that it is vital to have a strategy in place before designing a site.

The best part about your article, though you didn’t elaborate on it much, was the idea of measuring success. We can’t allow success to be subjective when we can easily identify criteria we want to improve.

If you want to generate 4 business leads a month from your site, that is something you can measure. The beauty of measurement is that is holds the clients honest. They shouldn’t ask for a site change just because “they don’t like the colors” if it is meeting their goals for the project.

And it empowers the designer to know when their design is actually successful. Sometimes we design sites that we think are successful because they look nice, but they aren’t acheiving the goals the client asked for.

posted at 03:48 pm on May 5, 2009 by Chris Meeks

2 Explaining the Guarantee

I want to add that when a client requests a certain design, element, or function; it may not guarantee actually leads.

In other words, if a client wants to generate more lead by redesigning, there is no guarantee that it will work, and usually they blame the designer or developer for not generating that lead.

I believe it is our job to tell them that risk.

posted at 01:06 am on May 6, 2009 by Henry Tran

4 Attracting webdesing

Using a template with stunning website designs is one of the easiest ways to draw viewers. Here are some tips to select a template for your website.

Select a high quality template that offers effective design at reasonable costs and make sure it is reusable.

If your site includes graphics or animations on your web page, use Flash HTML template. This will help you display graphics or animation easily.

posted at 09:02 am on May 7, 2009 by sugitha

5

Thanks for this article. I know everyone’s process is different and there is no “one size fits all” solution, but these techniques look very beneficial.

Doc Rivers (Celtics coach) recently said before a game that he wanted his players to be ‘aggressive within their limitations’ – a nice vague statement that I think is relevant to web design. Using your methods will be helpful in outlining those ‘limitations’ as well as keeping the client educated.

posted at 01:07 pm on May 7, 2009 by David Rodriguez

6 A little spooky

Thanks for this.

While I find it a little bizarre that your process so closely resembles my own (right down to the archetypes and attention points), now I can send people here and say, “See! This guy does it, too. And he’s got an article on A List Apart so he clearly knows what he’s talking about.”

posted at 04:17 pm on May 7, 2009 by stanley00

7 Very Good Article

A very good insight on how to design a website.Like any other things designing a website also requires good planning. a successful website always has good planning behind it. Following certain kind of methods definitely helps in building a successful wesbite.Again a very good article.

posted at 10:08 am on May 8, 2009 by aroopam

8 Simply Superb

great post!! very informative one especially in designing a web page. The guidelines provided are really essential in creating good webpage.

posted at 10:37 am on May 8, 2009 by NancyD

9 Great points

A couple of great points in that article. Keeping track of your leads is key. Great work.

posted at 01:15 pm on May 8, 2009 by buckyuk

10 thanks for these insights

as a beginning freelancer i greatly appreciate these insights. this article will help me push through to another level in my design. i have a lot of things to do! and now i have a framework to help guide me. all the best – patrick

posted at 06:43 pm on May 8, 2009 by spotted-dog