3 Q’s to Optimize Your Web Design

About the author: Eva Vesper is a writer and social media lover for Web Hosting Search. WHS is a hosting review guide on everything from cheap hosting (who doesn't love cheap!) to dedicated hosting and VPS (going high end!). Find her on twitter or say hi on the blogs at WHS.

The ways to build and design a website are often thought to be both many and fairly uncomplicated. On the contrary, building a great website should follow a few simple rules. What it comes down to it, it is a vital and irrevocable component: Systematically Planned Web Design. In order to create a well-designed, audience optimized, IE6 prepared website, here are 3 questions we suggest you answer.

Before you even think about starting Photoshop or begin coding, it is important that you have finished the planning process and answer these three simple questions:

1. Who is your targeted audience? By pinpointing your website’s target group/future visitors you will be able to form design, functions, and content according to your audience’s specific needs and characteristics. Let’s say you want teenagers between 14-17 years old to visit your site – by establishing that in advance you can start building your website that is higher tech and widget based than say a site for an older audience (who may not appreciate or know the twitters, digging, etc).

2. What are the main goals and objectives? The purpose of your site – establishing in advance what your website will focus on and contribute with will help you set the general framework of the site. Decide the main goals of the website by explaining its purpose in general terms. Then try to specify every page’s individual objective. Not only will this help you create a seamless, flowing site, you will also be able to optimize your site’s content.

3. How will you structure website content? This is a question more closely connected to web design. Planning how topics and sub-topics will be structured on the site will optimize usability and accessibility. By using index cards (yes! an old-fashioned method of pen and paper) you can get a good view on how pages, subpages and other categorical elements should be arranged.

Answering these three questions will, believe it or not, be a source of inspiration when it is time to design your website. By not directly starting with the design and instead initially spending some time planning, you will be able to draw inspiration from that in creating a great design at a later stage.