Start with the end in mind

Very inspiring words spoken by one of the most respected person for getting things accomplished and forming positive habits. Believe it or not, those few simple words also help kick start the design of a website. Before you can even put a pencil to paper to outline your website, think about what you want your website to be.

Even simple websites that start out as a one or two page online presence involve some pretty intricate details that might be left out during the planning. Knowing the various in’s and out’s of your website before you start not only ensures you are thinking of the features of your website, but you start to do something else; looking at reusability.

Reusability is important to not only get the best bang for your time, but to also offer consistency across all pages on your website and allow you to focus on the intricate details of other aspects to your site. The things to consider as reusable include the header, footer, menu bar, left margin or right margin. Leaving the “magic” area for dynamic content.

Starting with the end in mind for the website is also a good way to translate your design ideas on to paper to capture things that might just not be available in the web design world…at least for efficient websites. Sure, anything can be done, but you have to start balancing other factors such as load speed, end-user acceptance and yup, you guessed it…cost!

Seeing the complete picture is sometimes difficult. But the more you can refine what you want the site to be, the better we can translate that into reality!!

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