Stages of website design
What is website design and what are its stages? When designing a website, you need to remember that it will be visited by a variety of users, including people with disabilities. That is why it must be accessible to as...
What is website design and what are its stages?
When designing a website, you need to remember that it will be visited by a variety of users, including people with disabilities. That is why it must be accessible to as many people as possible. Wikipedia defines website accessibility as the degree to which a website can be perceived, understood and navigated by all users, regardless of their characteristics or impairments, and regardless of the properties of the software and hardware they use.
Website accessibility
Accessibility is extremely important for applications accessed through a browser, including websites. Website accessibility is primarily the concern of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). It launched the WAI – Web Accessibility Initiative, which develops web accessibility guidelines, ensures that web technologies support accessibility and creates tools for evaluating and facilitating accessibility. According to the W3C definition, accessibility means that people with disabilities can use websites, i.e. perceive their content, navigate them efficiently and interact with them. Website accessibility covers every type of disability that affects use of the web, including visual and hearing impairments and physical, cognitive and neurological disabilities. The solution to website accessibility problems is to create flexible websites that meet users' needs. Flexibility benefits not only people with disabilities, but also users with slow internet connections, for whom larger websites take a very long time to load.
Stages of website design
Once you know what functions a website should perform and what usability standards it should meet, you can start designing it.
According to Jesse James Garrett, the website design process consists of 9 stages:
- User requirements: researching and defining what the website's users really want to achieve. This helps you understand their way of thinking and learn their real needs.
- Site strategy: why the website is being created and how it will make money.
- Technology strategy: web technologies change rapidly, so you need to choose technology that will remain in use for a long time.
- Content strategy: what will make up the website's content and encourage potential users to visit regularly.
- Information architecture design: the key elements of the website should be properly highlighted so that users can find the information they need quickly and efficiently.
- Technology development: when programming the options and features each page is to have, you will need to choose a technology and work with it.
- Content development: this takes place once the expectations of the website's future users are known.
- Visual design: how the website looks and how users rate it depends heavily on its aesthetics, i.e. the graphic design and the appropriate layout and arrangement of its elements.
- Project management: each of the above stages should be reviewed and approved by the person managing the whole project. Once a stage is approved, you can move on to the next stages of website design.
