Strategy: Project Plan

Whether you're designing a website on your own or as part of a team, it's essential to have a formal project plan.

Written Plan

Below are some of the elements often found in a project plan:

• Audience Characteristics: primary and secondary
• Audience Implications
• Results of Needs Assessment: survey, interview, case study, observation, data, and/or testing.
• Website purpose and goals
• Unique contribution of website
• Content elements: essential, special, dynamic, interactive, and duplicate content
• Organizational design

Visual Plan

Start with a simple, doable plan. Go through this Web Design section of the the website and make a list of the information approaches to include on the site. Then, make an outline of the elements based on the list. Each main item on your outline will be a different page or section in your web site. Sketch a rough diagram of the site to help you visualize the "big picture:. Use sticky notes to allow you to change things around. Or try some concept map software.

Flowcharts and storyboards can also be used to describe how web pages relate to one another. Each box of a flowchart represents a separate page and the lines between show which pages logically relate to one another. A storyboard in an ordered series of sketches that show what each page in a web presentation should look like. It also shows hyperlinks on each page

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