As a continuation from the last and original posting, How the web design process works, we will pick up where we left off. You now have your elements, buckets or sections, and the color palette you want to use, but now comes the hard, yet exciting parts.

If you followed along in the last posting, I recommended that you visit several sites in your industry across the web which would help you decide what sections or buckets that you'd like to add to your website. Additionally while visiting these sites, you probably took notice of some of the visual elements that you liked or disliked on each site.

The next step in this process is to start paying attention to websites that you visit on a daily basis and start keeping a tally of all the elements that you like or dislike. It's important to have a fairly lengthy, yet non exhaustive list. I'd recommend gathering a total of 10 likes, and 10 dislikes, which will greatly help your designers and developers learn your tastes.

Good webdesign companies will provide thier clients with a good "Web Design Questionnaire". This questionnaire asks a range of questions which help the designers narrow down even further the direction you want your design to take. The idea behind the questionnaire is to ensure the designs that are produced are as close to what the client was looking for as possible. If the design company you are considering does not have a design questionnaire, I would be worried.

After identifying and gathering more details about what you want your website to resemble, the design company will take that information and carefully develop "wire frames". Wire frames are essentially visual representations of how your website will be laid out, but with the least time investment possible up front. For instance, instead of developing several full designs, the wire frame process gives you a good idea of what type of layout and structure your website will have, without too much of a time committment. This benefits both parties because if the design company goes down the wrong path with a design, you could lose several weeks of time.

Once the wire frames are delivered, generally a home page and subpage, you will then start to make changes to the wire frame layout. After you come to a decision on the wireframe, and have an approved layout, the design company will then start the design process.

Meanwhile you should be gathering the content that will reside on your website. This will include all written text, photos, logos, and any other type of assets you will be adding to your website. If you plan on adding any audio or video content at the launch of your website, this all needs to be done simulaneously. We ask all of our clients to provide photos in large jpeg format, logos in photoshop or illustrator files, and all text should reside in a popular word processeing tool such as Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, or Google Docs.

Stay tuned for the third edition of "How the Design process works"..