The Obligatory Blog

Simplify

There's a few scenarios that happen when putting together a new website.

One is to take it as an opportunity to include everything you've every wanted (or more importantly thought you wanted), because it's usually more economical to get it all done during the initial build process rather than have extra design/development done later.

A second option is to do the minimum with the site, get it up-and-running as quickly as possible and add more features and content in due course.

And of course there's any number of variations between these 2 extremes. Generally speaking, I believe a middle ground between these two is sensible.

In some instances, option 2 makes sense. But it is usually more expensive to add features on an ad-hoc basis at later dates. It's also harder for the web designer to plan for the updates, so things aren't always done in the most efficient manner.

Option one, going the whole hog right from the start is fine if you're absolutely confident that you've got everything covered before starting the project. But in my experience, no matter how much you plan on paper or wireframe, when you see the actual finished website - things have a habit of changing, looking different, not working quite how you imagined ... all sorts of things that when you start getting feedback from your users, you'll want to give a bit of a re-think to.

At the planning stage you should write up a golden wish list of every feature you need, want, might want, think would be quite handy - and then separate them into the must have's, nice to have's and let's be honest, we can live without. Focus on launching the site where all efforts have been focused on the must have's and making sure they're as close to perfect as they can be and not watered down in any way because efforts have been diverted into nice to have features. You can focus on the nice to have's when there are the resources available to launch them without any sacrifice to the must have features.

There's never a point when a website can be viewed as complete, the more regular you can make the revision and update process the better. Technology develops and user expectations change with it. What is a sector leading website when you launch it, can easily become outdated if left alone for an extended period. So always continue to think about what you can add to enhance your website.

Over time what you can add to enhance your website, also means what you can take away. One of the most referenced resources for good website usability is the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. The key focus of the book being: typical web user behaviour demonstrates that your site visitors want to navigate your site quickly and easily - without having to think. There's always a danger that over time your site becomes cluttered with banners, links and section links - and it can be difficult to step back, look objectively and decide: yes, most of these can be deleted.

Offering a visitor 6 options, does not make them twice as likely to use your services as only offering them 3. It might make them only half as likely because you're doubling their options and doubling the thought process.

John Cowen runs Mekonta - a web design business in Exeter. If you liked this article, subscribe.