As you develop strategy, develop realistic plans for the site's look and feel and functinality. This is often called the Web "front end," or scale and technical reach of your site. There is an enormous range of possibilities for web development, from the $10/month hobbyist site developed in simple HTML language by an amateur, to the major business sites costing tens of thousands of dollars in Internet infrastructure and millions of dollars in development. The front end is the appearance of your site. It is the graphic design and HTML portion--some people call this the user interface (UI). Consider this step very important--defining a plan for the UI will give your site coherence and cement it into your strategy.
Consider the important issues of download size--define a maximum KB per page. This includes the size of your HTML pages and of your graphics. A very popular site that supports visitors worldwide at low bandwidth will max out at 20K per page. You may be able to cater to a more elite group--sometimes your site has to be fancy and heavy with animation and flash.
However, don't force plug-ins, programming scripts, and heavy graphics on your visitors if you know that these features do not match your market’s demographic make up. If what you want to do is communicate ideas and information quickly, to a lot of people, then think about that when you design your website UI.
The UI of a website is ultimately how you will let your users know what you have to offer them. If you do not design an easy navigation scheme your users will get lost, and will never find all the valuable information you have on your site. The full potential of any website is unleashed through the UI. If you have money to spend on design, you may want to consider spending it on some professional UI help.
List the objectives that you want the front end to accomplish. Do you want millions of page views? Is there a certain theme or branding goal you need to achieve with the front-end design? Do you want users to sign up for newsletters? Do you want users to register for your content and become members? Do you want them to buy a service or product online? Think about the specific goals you want to achieve with the actual front-end design, and list them here.
In order to facilitate your front-end design you will want to include a Site Map in this section. This is very important for larger sites, and even a good idea for smaller ones. The site map will show the physical layout of all the pages, and how a user will navigate from page to page. Each page will also have a brief description of its purpose, and the ONE critical action a user must take on that page. If you do not create a site map yourself, then you may want to work with your front-end designer to create one. Make sure that you both agree on where the pages will go, and what pages will link to where. Also keep in mind the problem of scale, making sure that you don’t spend more on the plan than on the site.
If you are taking this to an outside UI designer, you may want to include some color printed copies of websites that you have looked at--and you like. Point out to the designer the parts of the example websites that you like: the color schemes, the navigation, the clean look, the fast loading pages, etc. All of these resources will help the designer build the front end exactly as you envision it. Make sure you provide your designer with a full copy of your website strategy. The more background he/she has, the better idea that designer has of the type of website you want.
