Website Design and Development Solutions
Welcome to the Website Design and Development research pavilion. Below you will find information from most of the leading vendors of these solutions and services in New Zealand, including contact details, case studies, articles, demos, web links, brochures and white papers to assist you research and locate the best solution for your organisation. Check also the iStart Diary for local seminars on this subject. All vendors showcased below will be glad to assist with your enquiries.
- Website Design and Development Overview
- Website Design and Development Solution Providers
- Articles / Industry Reports
- Other Resources
Solution Providers
Before embarking on any web development project you should ask yourself what do you want a web site for? Is it to showcase your products and services as an online brochure, or are you planning something more substantial that allows you to conduct business online?
The more thoroughly you can answer these questions then the better the position you’ll be in to brief your web developer. The developer will then provide you with a proposal, which should show a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and a preliminary assessment of the cost.
Once you have signed off the proposal, your developer will prepare a site map that illustrates how the site will work. This should be detailed enough to give you an idea of how the content will flow, down to at least the third or fourth level of pages.
The best web developers will also give you a series of storyboards that clearly show how different parts of the site will look and how your web visitor will interact with you online. At this stage, your web developer should also give you an assessment of your technical (back-end) options and a firm budget.
You should spend time considering whether this assessment meets your needs. Changing it later will be costly and frustrating.
The design of your site will begin with a design brief prepared by you and your developer. Good web design is all about combining brand and image with online navigation. But remember the rule, form is less important than function; a sexy site is useless if people can't get what they want within three mouse clicks.
Building the technical stuff is your developer's job - the content is up to you. However a good developer will help you through this process. They may even write the copy for you (at a price).
On the web, content is king. As with design, there is no advantage in having a sexy site if the content is boring, trivial or irrelevant to your visitors. Bear in mind the attention span required to read your content online and respect the intelligence of your audience.
A good idea to consider is a "beta" launch of your site - give key customers access to a test version of your site, and modify it based on their suggestions.
Last but not least - make sure your launch date is realistic then tell your customers - tell everyone. Don't forget to gear your site for search engines - your developer should take you through this process. Never launch a site half built.
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The agony of a website revamp |
Success IS director Debbie Mayo-Smith shares the processes and strategies she used to completely redo her company's website recently. If you're up for a re-work shortly then this article should give you a new perspective on your site, especially if you rely on search engine traffic. |
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Taking focus off the website user |
Often websites overlook promising opportunities from the usability perspective. Vineet Thapar discusses the importance of 'User Focus' while continuing to retain website technology intricacies. |
