Creating and Designing your Web Business - an experiential exercise in actually design a site

I've thought long and hard about how I wanted to approach web design in this site. There are a lot of sites on the web that go into great detail on the art of web design, and many of them are very good.

But they all teach web design from a kind of passive point of view - they talk about what makes a good site, how to deal with different design issues (navigation, usability, etc), writing good copy, etc.

And while all this is important, and believe me I read everything I can about good design in hopes of doing a better job, this kind of passive learning isn't necessarily easy for a lot of people and also doesn't translate into someone knowing how to actually go about designing a site.

I know this from my previous life as a lawyer - after 3 years of study, I knew a lot of "law" but I had no idea of how to be a lawyer at all (and boy did I get a quick education when I actually had to go to court).

So, I decided to make this section experiential. That is, rather than learn about web design passively, by reading my thoughts on web design, we are going to go through the steps I go through in designing an actual site.

For this, I am going to use the site I designed for my wife's old business, , My Favorite Baby Carrier, as our example. I designed this site in late 2003, and it was a very productive site for 6 - 7 years till her much large competitors in the baby market started selling it as a loss leader.

I'm hoping this experiential approach does a few things. First and foremost, I hope it gives you a good ideas of the issues involved in web design. So that even if use a web designer to get your site going, you will be able to play an active role in helping the designer to know the type of site you want, the content, how it should flow, etc. The more you know about the process and what makes for good web design, the better consumer you can be and hopefully the better the site will work for you.

Now some of you may not be as thrilled about learning what goes into making a website as I am. You may think that it is just too difficult, too much detail to learn, or your just too busy to get involved with it.

And I understand these concerns - and I will try to keep this section as non-technical as I can. But I really feel that it is important for a small business owner to understand what makes for effective web design so they can recognize if their website is "good". And by "good" I mean effective for their users and effective for their business.

All too often I have talked with small business owners who tell me that they really like their website - but the site just isn't doing any business. They place the blame for the failure of the site on the web (not enough people looking for their product or service, the dang search engines just won't show their site near the top of the search, etc), but they almost always tell me that they site itself couldn't be the problem.

In fact they usually love their website design, and are put off when I try to tell them that there may be some very basic problems with the design from my small business design perspective.

The problem is that most business owners don't know how to distinguish good from bad design. The way most people look at a design is from a graphic, visual point of view - and if it looks nice, has some snappy graphics, a way to order products, etc., then people are usually very satisfied.

In fact, small business owners I talked with are often most excited about flash graphics or other types of visual design elements that, in my view, often don't add to their site's functionality - and in many cases in fact detract from the site's viability.

So I have often been faced with small business owners that are very invested in their website, they think it is really terrific because it has a nice look and feel, but the site just isn't producing. And when I tell them that their site just isn't designed well to work for Ecommerce, they often just don't believe it.

And I can understand, because they have a lot of time and money invested in the site - and it usually does look good. But a pretty design doesn't necessarily mean an effective design, and effective small business design has little to do with graphics and a lot to do with giving your customers the best user experience possible.

Most web designers just have almost never actually run an actual Ecommerce business, so their web design doesn't reflect the kinds of concerns that affect real web businesses. It is just that the design considerations that go into making an effective Ecommerce site are very different that doing a personal site or one that looks nice, and all too often a small business person thinks they have a great site when in fact they have a site that just isn't designed for their purpose. And all too often small businesses end up paying a great deal of money for these types of sites - great looking but just not productive from an Ecommerce perspective.

Hopefully, by going through the design steps and learning why I make the choices that I do when designing a site, you will be able to understand what makes a good Ecommerce site and get a much more effective site designed for you.

Secondly, I hope that this experiential exercise in web design will help those of you who want to actually design their site get going. If you have the time, as you go through each section you might want to actually do that part of your website design as we go along.

I'm hoping that this will make your designing your site less painful, and after you go through this section you will find yourself with a mostly designed site. And you could then finish it out or turn it over to a designer for the finishing steps - but you would have gotten it going, and often that is the hardest step. I know I get a sense of relief when I finally get a site started, and feel a real sense of accomplishment every time I finally get a site finished and up.

Even if you do end up having a web designer do the actual site design for you, I think being involved in the basic design and fleshing out of the site really creates a much more effective design. It ensures that you bring your own unique vision to the site, and also by learning about effective web design for small business you make sure that your site will be one of the effective ones - not just one that looks nice.

So here we go - let's get started on designing the My Favorite Baby Carrier Site.

Next > Step 1 - Seeing if the idea is viable.

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