Pre website planning

[ecorrado]

I have started to produce data driven websites as well as plain old websites. Where I have a problem is I get overwhelmed in the planning of them.

 

How do you plan your websites. Do you use flowcharts? I start and get completely confused after a while.

 

Does anyone have a checklist or a sheet that they give to there clients to help them to get to what they want from the site. If you could post something that would be great.

 

Any help would be much appreciated. Also I am a visual person. I need a visual approach to

planning them.

 

Thanks a bunch.

[akurtula]

hi

 

i am a student, so have not had any clients (therefore i do not know how this is aproached on a real for situation) however this is what i do:

 

when i created a shopping card:

 

i went on 2 different online shopping sites and took notes on what were the MAIN elements, for example

 

+ a table that showed the items

+title, description, price and a buy link

 

+ a cart page

+ again the cart page has a table with the items the user selected

+ on the table there is a link to remove an item OR modify.

+ AND MORE (i'm sure you get the idea)

 

then there you have the checklist

 

however, if you are very artistic, then you can go crazy with the design (in which case, you do not need a check list at all)

 

So overall, i always brain storm the things that a site SHOULD have, as e.g if you do not include the above criteria in your site then there is no way you can call it a shopping card right?

 

as for already made check list - i have came across few (which cant remember where) but i found that they did not help me as much as my personal check lists

 

 

hope you can get something useful out of this

Edited July 8, 2009 by akurtula