Infinity Web Design

The web design process involves a great deal of preparations and there are many decisions that must be made initially and throughout the process. We strongly encourage adequate planning and preparation to save time and money in the long run.

Our goal is to develop a web site that far exceeds our clients' expectations. We seek to accomplish this objective through honest communication, thorough planning, and proper preparation. It is for this reason we have spent the time to develop this useful and informative section to help you better prepare for the web design process and get the most from your investment.

	Define Purpose & Goals
The goals of the web site and its purpose are very important. Why are you considering building one? The purpose of the web site should be well defined so that as various decisions are made throughout the development process, those that do not help promote the primary purpose of the site can be discarded or tabled for later consideration. This can become very important as it is all too easy to get carried away with developing a site and adding lots of bells and whistles, but costs make this type of limitless approach somewhat prohibitive. By keeping the goals of the site in mind, it helps keep the project focused and the costs down. Some potential goals might be as follows: Improve customer service Improve access to company information Introduce a product Increase sales Increase customer awareness Extend geographic reach Reduce advertising costs Recruit employees
	Define Target Audience
Who is your target audience? Defining your target audience will help you determine what the look and feel of the site should be and what it should contain in terms of content.
	Plan Content
Content should be of foremost concern and importance in web design. Too often sites emphasize function or form over content, but without worthwhile content, drawing in visitors to your web site may pose a serious problem. After all, the whole purpose is to drive traffic to your site so that you can achieve the goals for the site, right? The goals and purpose of the site should dictate the content that is included. Content should answer the questions: who, what, why, where, and when. Some ideas for content are as follows: Company info Services or products Contact info Employment opportunities Executive info Calendar of events Promotional info about the benefit of the products or services Press coverage Kudos, testimonials, or client list Links Content should be provided in digital format whenever possible (via email, FTP, online, as attachment, on diskette, Zip disk, etc.) to reduce costs as this will enable the content to be copied and pasted into the HTML documents so that only formatting changes will be necessary. Content that is provided only in hard copy or non-digital format will incur regular charges.

Plan Organization & Structure

Once the content has been determined, the organization and structure should flow from the content. Based on the proposed content, what is the most logical flow of information. This is important because users will not stay long if they cannot find the information they seek quickly and easily.

Determining structure entails deciding where content will be housed and what the name of the page will be. Yes, pages must be given names or "titles" in web design so that they can be clearly labeled for ease of use, and so they can be used as hyper link names to jump from one page of the site to another for ease of navigation. Page names should be concise, yet meaningful.

Web site hierarchy is also part of the organizational and structural considerations. How many pages will there be and what will their hierarchy be? A site's hierarchy is analogous to an outline or a organizational chart. There are primary pages, and then there are usually secondary, and tertiary pages, particularly in large, complex sites. An example follows:

Primary Page	Secondary Page
Main page
Products	Pages for Products A, B, C . . .
Employment Opportunities	Pages for Job A, Job B, Job C . . .

Plan Site Navigation

There are different forms of navigation that can be used, primarily there are framed and non-framed environments. Within the framed environment arena, there are multiple ways to organize frames. This site utilizes three frames: one for the top logo, one for the site links on the left, and one for the body where site content is displayed. The number of pages of the site and your site's structure and hierarchy will often affect your navigational choices. If there is a long list of primary pages, left-border frames are not recommended (if a scroll bar in this area is unavoidable).

Plan Appearance

What is the general look and feel you want to achieve? Again, your target audience should dictate much of this. And your existing logos and graphics will also help in this area. Typically the current logo design that coincides with current printed materials is used so that the web site is an extension of the current image and identity already established.

At a more basic level, a color scheme must be selected. The colors should compliment graphics that will be used on the site, but color choices must be determined for the following:

Background if no graphic will be used (frames allow a different color in each if desired)
Text area
Text Fonts
Text Section Headers
Text Sub-section headers
Links: Unvisited, Active, Visited

Web safe color palettes are available to help in the color selection since there are so many colors to choose from, two of which are RGB Color Chart and The Color Center.

Plan Graphics

Graphics, brochures, catalogs, business cards, photographs, clip art, and other materials that will be provided by client are important, and they can also be very helpful in providing a better understanding of company image and project goals. Often times the artwork included in these promotional items can be repurposed for a web site.

Graphics can also be developed based on customer needs and requirements. Graphic headers and navigational buttons are often used on many sites, and these are almost always customized for each site based on customer input and direction. Graphic logos and site design graphics can also be generated based on customer input and direction.

There are also many resources for clip art, photographs, and other artwork through Infinity Web Design, online, and through computer stores. Note that while Infinity Web Design has access to various large collections of art, it is time-consuming and costly to search these collections without specific direction.

Please be aware that many commercial products have limited use policies, so know what they are before you buy. Additionally, be very careful whose graphics you harvest from the Internet as copyright infringement is a serious issue. Unless you have permission or the owner has clearly authorized use, "free" graphics typically cannot be used on commercial sites.

	Make Font Decisions
Part of the appearance of your site involves text and graphics fonts. Although there are many, many fonts available, remember that a user will be able to see your text in the font as you intended it only if they have the font used installed on their computer. This somewhat limits the text fonts that can be used, especially since readability is another major consideration. The fonts that can be used in graphics are another matter. If you have specific font preferences, please let us know prior to any graphics design services so that we can incorporate your font preferences into custom graphics developed. The names of fonts used in existing logo and graphics should also be provided.
	Make Sales Decisions
If you will be selling products or services online, you must consider how these transactions will be carried out. For instance, will you be collecting credit card information line, or will you require shopping cart services. Will you be accepting checks online? The answers to all of these questions have important consequences, as offering these types of services requires special handling and additional services. For example, taking credit card information online requires SSL (secure socket layer) encryption to protect your customers' private information. Accepting credit cards requires a merchant account. Accepting digital checks requires digital check services. And then there are shopping cart programs, servers, and scripts for selling products online. Selling products online requires that these and other important considerations be investigated to assess which types of transactions to offer and how to best meet these needs.
	Make Links Decision
Have you considered whether you will have links to other sites on your web site? There are two schools of thought on this: on the one hand, why would you want to give visitors a reason to leave your site? One the other hand, participating in a reciprocal link exchange with complimentary sites can help you broaden your visibility, increase traffic, and build good will among the Internet community.
	Register the Domain Name
Will you be registering for a domain name or have you already done so? Will it be necessary to transfer your domain for any reason? Often times, your hosting company handles registration and of transfer without additional charges - this can be helpful with respect to completing forms and such.
	Make Hosting Arrangements
Do you have a hosting company already selected or will you also need help with this? There are many hosting companies to choose from, and more spring up everyday. To further complicate the selection process, many companies are actually resellers of another's service, and there is no true value added to the service. We have developed some information on the subject of Hosting that might be helpful. We also offer a hosting recommendation service that could be useful if you have not yet selected a company to host your site.
	Plan Promotion Strategy
Web site promotion is an important part of letting the Internet community and your potential customers know that you have arrived. Initially, search engine registration will be the critical first step. Search engines and reciprocal links are still the leaders when it comes to finding your site, so do not overlook this important component of web site promotion. Infinity Web Design offers search engine registration services, and we have also developed an informational section on web site Promotion. For effective search engine registration, sites must have META tags. META tags are invisible to the user, but they reside in the underlying code of the HTML and they enable to search engine "robots" to properly index them in their directories. Three very important META tags are the site title, description, and keywords. See our section on META tags for more information on the importance of this useful coding tool.
	Plan Maintenance
Web site maintenance must also be considered. It is more critical to some than others, but it must nevertheless be addressed by all web site owners. Time sensitive information absolutely must be updated as it becomes out of date. And content must be updated on a regular basis as well. Content that changes periodically is positively correlated to how frequently you can expect your visitors to return to your site. There must be a reason for them to return. Make sure that maintenance has been considered and factored into your overall web design budget.
	Define Schedule
Is there a schedule under which the web site must be developed or a necessary date of completion? A web site can be developed fairly quickly once all decisions have been made and all materials gathered; however, plan on approximately 2-4 weeks for the planning, materials collection, development, and implementation of the site. And remember that schedule demands should be addressed early to avoid unnecessary problems.
	Define and Allocate Budget
Please assess your budget as honestly and objectively as possible as this will help us to figure out where we must allocate your financial resources to help you meet both your web site and your budgetary objectives. Remember there are other costs involved in addition to web design, such as graphics, domain name registration, hosting, promotion, and maintenance. All of these costs should be considered when deciding how to allocate your resources toward your projected web design costs.
	Materials Checklist

We have developed this checklist of potential materials to assist you with gathering materials that will help us both in our quest to develop a web site on your behalf:

Brief description of company goals and purpose of site, along with how the site should help you achieve these objectives
Company promotional items, including business cards, brochures, hand-outs, flyers, and such from which to harvest graphics and content, as well as develop an idea of the personality of the company
Description of proposed appearance and desired navigation of site
Site Content for each page (digital format preferred)
Proposed site structure or hierarchy with page names clearly labeled
All potential graphics, photographs, and original artwork from printers or designers (digital format preferred)
Brief description of graphics to be developed
Font preferences and or names of fonts used in company logo or graphics
Color preferences for fonts, backgrounds, etc.
Meta tag instructions, including site title, description, and keywords
Thoughts on links to others
Preferences for counters, guest books, etc.
Requirements for domain name registration, hosting, and promotion
Schedule requirements
Budget & constraints
Model sites: are there any sites on the Internet that you particularly like or want to model your site after? Browsing the WWW and having a few "likes" and "dislikes" can help us better determine your preferences.

Request Form
If you would like to be contacted to further discuss your web design project needs, please fill out our online Request Form and you will be contacted shortly.