Paul Boag generously gives away freely his book The Website Owners Manual in PDF format.

Get your copy on his website here; Boagworld.com is also an excellent resource for website owners, designers and web developers.

A bit about the website owners Manual.

Your users can play many roles:

• They are your paying customers.
• They can promote your website to others.
• They can often provide support to others who are having difficulties with your products or services.
• They can suggest improvements to your offering.
• They are your community that supports you online.

Ultimately without users, your online presence is nothing!

- Paul Boag (http://boagworld.com)

Helping you:

• Understand objectives
• Meet project goals (if possible)
• Get results
• Have a successful project

Important questions to ask, consider and take note, this will also work for reviewing or redesigning a website.

The Questions to ask yourself or your client

1. Give us your main reasons for commissioning a new website?
2. In order of importance (most important first) what are the business objectives for your site
? (eg, improving sales rate, increase customer satisfaction, reduce time searching)
3. What is your measure for success, and what are you hoping to achieve? 
(ie, 20% increase in sales)
4. What aspects of your current site work well and why are they successful?
5. What’s not so great and why do you think that is?
6. Who’s coming to your site? Describe the different types of visitors to your website in as much detail as possible.
7. How do you think your audience currently perceives your company and the services you offer?
8. What do you imagine people using your site for? What will they want to do there?
9. Why will people choose your site over others?
10. How do these features support your business goals and the goals of your user?
11. People are coming to your new site for the first time. How do you want them to feel about your company?
12. Tell us a bit about your competition. Who are the runners and riders in your field (including their website addresses)?
13. What works for them? What doesn’t?
14. Leaving your competitors aside, have you seen any sites recently that you’ve liked the visual design of? What did you like about it?

Conclusion

Working on and implementing just a few of these questions should enable you to create a much better and more successful project or website. Focus on why you are doing the project and what you want to achieve, not just making it pretty or using the latest web development.

Questions taken from the Clear Left “Client Ideas Sheet” clearleft.com

Other project Planners

Design by Front on planning a web project.
Smashing Magazine on web design checklists and questionnaires

The event had a positive feel and I know that the next event will be bigger and better that is why I will be attending 14th March, 2012 Bardic Theatre, Donaghmore @ 3pm. Come along and help Dungannon area businesses.

It was inspiring to hear local business success stories who now run large successful companies giving tips, advice and discussing what we can all do to help.

I attended this event and provided some free advice to local business people.

more visit the website Up For Business

The discussion from local business success stories included Paul Byrne (Country Stoves), Cathal Hagan (H2 Engineering), Sean Cavanagh (Cavanagh Kelly Accountants), Maire McAvoy (McAvoy Group) and Ralph Brown (Grange Lodge).

Up For Business is a campaign for those of us that are fed up with all this depressing conversation in the business community and want to get up and do something. We are starting 2012 with the belief that you can be realistic about doing business whilst also being peaceful, happy and living life to the full.

So if you are in business and want to be in place where you can be surrounded with like-minded positive entrepreneurs sign up now and make a difference.

Are you up for it?
Over 40 local advisers, mentors and experts in many business disciplines are offering their services free of charge to business entrepreneurs on at 3pm on 1st March in CRAIC Arts Centre, Coalisland, and at 3 pm on 14th March in the Bardic Theatre, Donaghmore. Like a “speed dating” event, visitors will have the opportunity to have 30-minute long “speed mentoring” meetings with the experts of their choice.

If you would like to register to attend then complete the on-line registration form and tick which business issues you would like to get free mentoring in. During the event there will also be motivational speakers and experts from various business disciplines giving short public presentations to businesses that attend.

more visit the website Up For Business

The idea is partly inspired by Local Heroes:

rte.ie/localheroes

Communities around Ireland are being inspired by the actions of Drogheda’s citizens in the TV series ‘Local Heroes – A Town Fights Back’

limericklocalheroes.com

As the website mediaqueri.es demos shows there are now many more screen sizes and resolutions. We should be designing responsively with our websites if possible moving forward.

This blog resizes currently although I intend on doing more work on it.

Your website doesn’t sit on a desk anymore. Design differently when you can, consider mobile users and devices.

Wilson Miner – When We Build from Build on Vimeo.

Excellent talk I attended at Build Conference 2011.

We shape our tools and our tools shape us.” As more of the tools we live with every day become digital instead of physical, our opportunity – and responsibility – as designers is multiplying. We live in a world of screens, and we are the ones who decide what goes on them. We are in a unique position to have an impact – one that lasts longer than the next redesign or the latest technology. What happens when we stop thinking of ourselves not just as developers or experience designers, and take up the mantle as a new generation of product designers for a digital world?

Recorded at Build 2011
buildconf.com
twitter.com/buildconf

Simon Collison – We Are The Explorers from Build on Vimeo.

Creative people are usually deep thinkers, obsessively pursuing thorough lines of inquiry. Most of us shaping the web are no exception, each eager to learn, analyze, and share as we swim against an endless tide of information and opinion. To succeed we must understand our strengths, and develop an integrity by which we find our focus and measure our contribution. It’s not so much about a destination as it is about just doing. Join Simon as he takes stock of where we’re headed – both as an industry and as individuals – with stories designed to inspire and make us more optimistic about our roles in building the web.

An Evening With: Gavin Strange from Build on Vimeo.

An interesting talk for creative people I was lucky enough to attend featuring the inspiring work of Gavin Strange.

A jack of all trades and a master of flip all, Gavin Strange has been excitedly stumbling through the world of design for the last ten years like a kitten on opium. Learn how he managed to transition from talentless oik from Leicester into a clueless oik with a burning passion to make stuff, becoming Senior Designer for the Digital department of the illustrious Aardman Animations in Bristol.

HTML Boilerplates

html5boilerplate.com
htmlemailboilerplate.com

CSS3

css3generator.com

Web fonts

google.com/webfonts
typekit.com
fontdeck.com

Interesting collection of page speed improvement tips aimed at web developers.

More at Google speed

Notes on portfolio and this blog:

• Shows my best work only
• Is Simple
• Looks interesting
• Uses some CSS3 and HTML5
• Will allow me to blog here

I am not fully happy with the look / feel or the content so I intend to improve it over the next few months.

View my web design portfolio >>