CS Design Art

 Purpose

 What will your website be used for – is it for personal use or business? 

Things to consider:

• Who is your target audience – age range, demographics (location based) particular careers or hobby’s (to name only a few)
• Do you want to generate business – Will there be anything to buy or download or is it only informational?
• Personal – an online resume, portfolio or blog?

 Function

 What technology does your site require?

A few thoughts:

• Forms – are a great way to engage your audience and also essential in gathering information.  Contact forms, emails sign ups or registration forms are a few of the different types that can be used on your website.
• Ecommerce – the ability to sell items on your website either thru mail or digital downloads, or the ability to take donations or payments can transform your website from informational to ecommerce.
• Call to action –  When your goal is to encourage a visitor to click a button, fill out a form or complete a survey (to name a few). Ultimately the longer a visitor stays on your website the better chance there is of conveying, selling or gathering information you have, often times it is thru a call to action that engages them to stay longer.  Humans are curious, and love to find out what is behind door #2.

 Look

What do you want your website to look like?

Gaining visual ideas:

1. Colors – If you already have a logo created or company colors it stands to reason that you would like your site to work well with the established colors of the company or logo. If you are free to choose your colors and have no idea where to start you might want to take a look at color meanings and see if any specific color stands out to you may want to view some website color schemes and see if any particular blend catches your attention. Also many people believe colors have specific meanings.

• Design Layout –
  – Do you want your website to expand completely across the screen or the contents centered in the middle with space on both sides.
  – Where would you prefer your menu ( some call them tabs) at the top, sides and/or bottom.
  – Would you like a large slider or static image at the top of the home page or even all pages or the logo only.
  These questions along with the function questions above help in the first stages of building your website foundation / prototype.   As with building a house – a builder uses a blueprint, the same applies to a website.
• Design Style –  At this you will select ‘style’ it is a loose term and applies to several different areas.  Do  you like your images to be photo style images or cartoon images?  Do you prefer more text vs. images and do you like modern over vintage.  Often people don’t know exactly what style they want or have a hard time describing the style, in this case there is an easy visual way to accomplish this task.
• Finding your Style – In the case where you are not sure of what style you like an easy painless way to do this is by browsing other websites and determining which you like and don’t like.  If you find a couple that are in a style that you like, share them with us and we can create a site with your unique style.  * we will not copy a  website, but we can create something similar with your personal details added.
• Font Style – Fonts are important to design as choosing the appropriate clothes for an occasion. It does sound odd that fonts can make a difference but they do set the mood, determine whether something is serious or funny and display your personality.   There are many fonts to select from and we will be happy to help in this area.