Dmitriy N. Full-Stack Developer

Planning the site: how to avoid unnecessary costs for development

To create an Internet project that does not stretch for years and will be accomplished within the approved budget, you need to carefully approach the design - a preparatory stage of development. With the right approach it will become the foundation of your future project. During the preparatory stage you can research the audience and its interests, calculate the risks, plan the optimal site structure, describe scenarios of users' interaction with the system and the terms of reference for the program blocks.

Short is not clear

When working on a complex task, it is important to have a full understanding of the customer and the developer. The less precisely the project idea is described, the higher the probability that you will not get the result you were expecting. Until now, there are situations when a client describes the task definition for a complex site very briefly, without much detail, within a couple of text pages. Everyone can understand it in their own way, depending on their ideas about beauty. Therefore, the initial assessment of the project will be very different from one developer to another. And in the process of implementation there will be a lot of clarifications, after which the estimate will seriously increase, and at the same time the planned date of launch will be delayed. As a result, the budget allocated to the project is not enough, deadlines are delayed, and project participants feel uncomfortable.

To avoid getting into such a situation, you have to prepare for development. Just as builders and architects prepare the design documentation before constructing a new building, before you start developing a complex website it is necessary to figure out and describe a lot of important things. And although the risks here are not comparable , the customer risks the money invested and the time spent. And maybe even lost profits.

When to begin?

Before you start the design work, you should answer several questions in detail and honestly:

- What is the main goal of your project? Most often the goal is commercial gain, but there are others.

- What similar services already exist and how strong are they? Even if the project you come up with is unique, it solves some people's needs. And you need to understand how people are dealing with those needs right now.

- Who are you doing the project for, who are these people? How do they use the Internet and under what circumstances will they come to your site?

- What exactly will a representative of the audience do on the site to reach their goal?

- What steps are required on your part in response to the user's actions (accept an order, send an email, add to a database, etc.) and who will do them?

- From what sources is the user most likely to come to your site and to what pages first? In the future, this will help to make a promotion program.

- Any site is a product of information, and it must be filled with materials. What kind of materials will be, who will prepare them and how often will they be updated? Perhaps the materials already exist and need to transfer them from another site?

- Criteria for success - conditions and indicators by which you will understand that your project is developing in the right direction and at the right speed.

This is only a part of the questions, there are a lot more of them. Detailed answers to them will help you accurately determine the composition of necessary software modules, describe the processes of interaction with the system by users and employees of your company, build a site map and user paths based on these scenarios. Based on the scenarios and maps, we will further create prototypes of interfaces.

Many questions arise and are resolved in the process of design work. Is it necessary to do registration and what exactly should registered users be allowed to do? Is it necessary to have a system for publishing news or a blog, who and how often will write there? Will it be possible to pay for orders on the site, what payment systems will be needed for this? What information blocks are necessary in the mobile version, and which can only be done in the full-screen version? There will certainly be questions about the admin panel and its usability, it is imperative to specify the integration with external systems, if automatic data exchange is expected. As a result, we get a complete picture of the future project "on paper", discussed and agreed upon by all stakeholders. Agree that this is much more convenient than remembering about an important service, when the entire site is ready. And it avoids tedious rework, "crutches" and delays.

The importance of visualization

They say that sometimes a picture replaces a thousand words. For the design of sites this statement is also true, but the pictures are specific. I mean the process schemes and prototypes of interfaces, without which the terms of reference will be incomplete. At the beginning of the article we mentioned the need for clarity and understanding between the participants in the development of a complex information system. Some of them are better at perceiving a written text, while others are used to thinking in visual images and will understand a visual scheme much better. Therefore, it is better when a flowchart of the main processes of the system is attached to the terms of reference described in texts and tables. Besides, when making them it is possible to better understand the order of interaction between the participants and find bottlenecks.

Prototypes, or UX-charts of interfaces of future pages of the information system - is another type of visualization. These are "skeletons" of future design layouts with which we show what elements should be on the page and how they can be roughly arranged so that the system performs the intended function and the user feels comfortable. On projects which do not require in-depth study of software modules, page prototypes can be the main result of the designer's work and partially replace the requirements specification.

What is the result

Ready description of the project, or terms of reference for website development - it is a voluminous document, including tables with the elements of catalogs, description of software modules, process schemes and prototype pages. Familiar with it, a competent developer will be able to give a clear estimate of the cost and timing of the work and proceed with it without further discussion.

There are situations when the complete TOR is not made deliberately before the start of work. This usually applies to new online services and startups that have no analogues and go off the beaten path. They are created with the help of flexible project management methods: first a minimal working version (MVP) is made and then additional functionality is built based on it, depending on "how it goes". However, with this approach, you also need to study the audience, to formulate the goal and the basic requirements, to design the MVP itself. Planning of possible ways of development and future program modules is also not superfluous. They can be engaged already after the launch of the minimal variant, having an analytics in front of you.

But if you are planning to develop an online store, an information portal or other resource, which has many technical analogues, it is better to design it completely at once. This will allow you to get a realistic estimate of the cost and timing of development, and avoid costs for possible rework. And also - start getting ready in time to support and promote the project.