Some pointers on briefing for website design

Time is a commodity that is in very short supply for most people. And, I've found that my clients are no exceptions.

Working without a proper brief has been a fact of life for many years now and I've worked my way around this by filling in the blanks as much as possible. I take the attitude that it's better to take a communication job, be it an ad, a brochure or press release to the next stage ASAP.

Giving the client a word doc (for a press release), or a PDF for an ad or brochure, for him/her to look at is easier and gets the job done faster than waiting for a better brief, or more material to take a job to the next stage.

There are however some jobs that I just cannot take any further without a proper brief. One of these is the preparation website.

First of all, why do you need a website? What are you going to use this for? Who do you expect to influence? What message do you want to leave with them?

These are the first considerations for any brief for a communication piece. With a website, more things have to be considered.

After answering the above, one has to consider the content for inclusion. Will there be product brochures, flyers, maybe whole catalogues? How will these be grouped? Are they going to be in separate pages? What about photos?

As photos have to be optimised for the web, these have to be small in size for quick download. And, with the medium able to use JPEGs ( a lossy format), quality of the photos need not be super quality. (No out-of-focus shots, please.)

Also, considerations as to how often these have to be changed. Will the website be purely static? Are there any interactivity considerations? What about e-commerce?

There are a lot of other considerations covering search engine optimisation, meta tags and what about building a community, or a blog to be incorporated in the site.

As you can see, it's not just straight forward.

More on this in another blog.

What is Web 2.0...where does blogging fit in?

Recently, I was asked just what exactly is Web 2.0? Well, this is the shape of today’s web. The next generation, really.

Web 2.0 was first coined by O’Reilly Media, an American company.

The term is used to distinguish the web model today from the start of the web as we know it. For instance, Britannica Online was the encyclopedic source of Web 1.0, while in Web 2.0 it’s Wikipedia. Personal websites were the go in Web 1.0, and now it’s blogging.

The accent was on publishing previously, in Web 2.0 it is more on participation.

Hence, Web 2.0 refers to today’s more collaborative, friendly and interactive transformation of the more staid and static Web 1.0.

It is to take advantage of the current paradigm, that I have approached my clients to consider the use of blogging to get the message out there. Not just to let their customers get more information, but to get feedback on what they are thinking.

While 15 years ago, one had to consider if their firm needed a website, today this is a given. No one can do business without one.

So, in today’s Web 2.0 world, the question is “Do we need a blog?”.

What do you think?

Will blogging overtake standard websites

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I recently came across a prediction that blogging will eventually overtake conventional websites. I wonder.

In the Web 2.0 world, a lot of changes have occurred on th internet. Blogging is one such phenomenon. Communication, with comments going back to other way--to the blog writer--has been made that much easier.

What a difference to static websites. Of course, there are sites that allow the viewer to order stuff on-line. E-commerce is now an established mode of marketing. Something that has expanded in the Web 2.0 world.

But, what about blogging? Will it take over standard sites?

Personally, I see a greater increase in blog sites. Both for sites that are standalone and those hosted by providers like Google. And, with this growth, I see an increase in popularity.

Users will not just read through stuff put up in blogs, but will get more involved.

From just another thing that techies did on the web, blogs are now mainstream. Again, Web 2.0, with the start of Blogger.com changed the blogosphere.

And, on a personal level, blogs has been the go for sometime now. We should note that the corporate level is also very active in the areas with CEOs of many of the larger companies (Fortune 500) having their own blogs.

In Australia, blogging in the corporate world is still in its relative infancy. I see this slowly changing and blogging becoming more popular for the corporates--whether this is for personal blogging by executives or corporate blogging.

And, like a snowball rolling down a mountain, gathering more snow with it, as it rolls, blogging will only get bigger.

And, yes, this could well take over from standard websites.

When, I would say in a matter of one to two years.

There will still be websites and they will still perform the tasks they set out to do. But, blogs will proliferate and possibly take over in popularity.

It's going to be very interesting to watch just how this unfolds.

Until my next posting.