We have a new web design project before us.  We sit down to our desk and open up the blank Photoshop page . Wait a minute. You already went to far. Lets rewind a bit. Lets first think about 5 things we should keep in mind when you design your next web site.

1. Competitors

How often do you think about the clients competitors. This is important to do since their competitors are reaching for the same attention from a focused target group. When looking at the characters you can look for things like: How do there clients feel about their product or services. You can do this by reading reviews and social conversations. This will provide you with valuable information on where you can improve the brand of your client. Also look at what features they may have incorporated into their web sites and why. We aren’t saying copy them, but look at what they have done and see if you can improve on what they were trying to accomplish.

2. Social Media

Why is thinking about social media important in your web design? Social media web sites are the main areas where people will be talking about the services and products of your client. People will continue to talk about a brand for better or for worse and it’s important that your client has an effective hold on their brand in these areas. What are some ways you can incorporate social media into your web design? One thing you can do is tie social media into their brand itself. How? You can incorporate social media in your design by making  areas that promote  individuals to like the company on Facebook. If your site has login capabilities maybe you can design the site in a way that encourages the user to log in with their Facebook account. Think about how you can create a design that will encourage the customers to be actively communicating about the brand.

3. Web Technology

Web Technology is constantly improving. You may be used to designing a site with a certain web technology in mind. Why not research whats new and available, and see if you can create a design that can make the most use of newer web technologies like HTML 5 and CSS3 and jQuery. Think about how you can design the web site to use these new technologies to present information in an accessible way.

4. Mobile Platforms

What about mobile platforms?  The mobile web is becoming even more popular due to the increase in sales of tablets and smart phones. In fact there are more people doing most of their web surfing on these devices rather than desktop computers. You should think about how your design will look on these devices. Learn about the different screen sizes and resolutions that these devices are using. Find out what technologies you can use to create a better experience, and do some research to check out what some other web design firms have created for mobile platforms.

5. Inspiration

Inspiration can be found all over the web. Some of my favorite sites to get inspiration from are thebestdesigns.com and bestwebgallery.com. When viewing these look at how the different designers use typography, color and space. All these will help a great deal in fueling your imagination when it comes to your next web design project.

These are only five of the things that have helped me prepare for a web design projects and I know there are much more. Please share in the comments some of your favorite things you keep in mind when designing a web site.

Check out some of our web sites as well on our work section of this web site.

www.fiveoclockemedia.com. A Minneapolis Digital Agency.

Social Media is the use of “Any Media” to interact socially. The phenomena that is causing all of the uproar is the increasing adoption of ever more powerful socially adaptable technologies.

Remember! Direct communication among peers and others driven by our needs as humans to interact for knowledge, confirmation, exposure of mistrusted resources, etc. pre-dates all modern technologies. It advanced through “Smoke Signals, Gutenberg, Marconi and now The Internet via smart phones.”

There have been some individuals who have stated that they do not know of any firms that were impacted by negative social buzz. I beg to differ as a direct victim of this within a firm that I worked for in the recent past. The firm I worked for did not initially take the negative buzz seriously. They acknowledged it, yet stated that the employees should not respond to it and just continue to maintain a high level of quality work, that that would overcome the impact. They were wrong! By the time they acknowledged and began to address what became very apparent, tremendous damage was done!

If you own a business, do not let anyone fool you. The failure to establish sophisticated listening posts to analyze the “noise” so that you can more accurately assess any impact on your markets and/or company is a tactical mistake! What you do not know can hurt you, whether you now realize this or not.

This also weighs in when considering opportunities for expanding or revising your market demographics. Social data is increasingly becoming a crucial component to base assumptions upon when determining the focus and execution of marketing campaigns.

Your audience is rapidly adopting technology for mobile and immediate communication to express ideas, concerns, to illicit opinions, to express fears, to galvanize others to action, etc. If you do not adapt to these same technologies in a way that gains you trust as a respected participant, you will experience a range of dynamic impact that you are not prepared to measure or effectively react to.

The road to social technology adoption is littered with victims. Some very prominent such as Palm. This is a firm that owned a platform particularly positioned to jump ahead as use patterns indicated a strong desire for mobile, compact and powerful convergence of data and voice. Instead, they blinked and Apple surged ahead on the strength of the iPhone and later broadened their dynamic range with the iPad.

Your customers and others crucial to your positioning within your markets are shifting to this new increasingly important range of personal, socially adaptable technologies. Even IT departments of major firms are adopting these technologies, which were being resisted previously due to proper concerns over security and integrity of internal networks. This is now very apparent, as you are witnessing RIM (Research in Motion) and other primary providers to corporate clients shifting their production to these socially favored technology platforms.

You must realize that real-time interaction with your marketplace via powerful “Social Technologies” is no longer an option! When those of us who are serious students of the amplification of social interaction that has transpired due to the increased adoption of technologies enhancing social interaction check our data, we see ever increasing ability for individuals to move ever increasing numbers of others to shift opinions and consequent activities. Witness what is happening in the Middle East right now!

The very forum that we are participating in indicates the intense impact this subject is generating.