Design

Typically design fees vary from £2.5K to £25K depending on client requirements and the complexity of the site.

We use our own user-centred design process to develop engaging, highly usable and successful websites. As part of the design process, we will consider five key areas (subject to budget available) including Audience, Information Architecture, Usability, Creative and Persuasiveness.

For further information on our design capabilities, please visit: http://www.itineris.co.uk

Audience

We would use a wide variety of techniques to understand the website audience including (where appropriate):

• Creation of customer personas. These are essentially a 'thumbnail' of the typical visitor and whilst they will have demographics it is essential they focus on the goals of the user. They can be a powerful technique for increasing customer usability and customer centricity of the website.
• Identifying/mapping customer journeys. Different personas are likely to visit different areas of the site. Evaluating how they travel ensures they can have the information they require to make an informed choice.

Information Architecture

Sound Information Architecture (IA) is critical for any site. Specifically we would use our skills to address:

• The combination of organisation, labelling and navigation schemes
• The structural design of an information space to allow users to complete tasks and access content
• The art and science of structuring and classifying the website to help people find and manage information.

IA is critical to 'findability' - a good IA will make it easier for site visitors to find product information or content in browse mode or search mode. IA also has an influence on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The key output from IA is a content model - the underlying structure of the content which is the Blueprint to which other elements are added.

Usability

We would use a combination of approaches to improve and plan usability:

• Expert reviews. We would assess any existing design to identify problems in advance of testing or focus groups
• Surveys. These can be useful for quantitative feedback
• Interview. Particularly useful for business-to-business websites
• Focus Groups. Useful for getting feedback on preliminary design in advance of usability testing
• Testing. Applied to existing systems or to test new systems before they go live and identify practical problems with using the site. Can use techniques such as lab-based testing, eye-tracking and field testing
• Card-sorting. Useful for assessing meaningful labels in navigation systems.

Creative

We would consider a number of issues and exploit a number of tools to develop the design for any web site including:

• Layout. We would use wireframe diagrams which are a powerful technique to define the most effective layout for different areas of the site. We could then produce and test paper prototypes of the proposed site. We also consider screen resolution and the use of fixed layouts, fluid layouts, adaptive layouts and user-selectable layouts.
• Moodboards. Different visual elements combine to form a personality for the site. Moodboards can be a useful tool to consider softer issues like look and feel, tone and manner, attitude, narrative voice, emotional impact, particular flavour and unique identity.
• Typography. Use any brand guidelines to consider how the brand should feature online. We would consider the typography along with the overall visual design. If no guidelines exist, we would audit existing collateral.
• Web 2.0. We would consider what Web 2.0 elements and tools are suitable to help users 'find, make and share'.

Persuasiveness

Persuasion is a key area often neglected that is aimed at developing content and writing copy to convert visitors to the required outcomes for the business. There are a multitude of ways that this can happen across all areas of a web site and we work collaboratively with the client to make improvements.