Designing a website is not all that complicated. Although it is amazing how many people manage to get it wrong. The key is to have an organized process that you follow to make sure that all of the critical design elements are there and that they go together in a way that makes sense. If you can do that then designing a website becomes fairly easy at that point.
The first thing that we do when we are starting the web design process is to discuss with the client what their purpose is for creating the site. This is a critically important step since the way that your site is designed is going to depend largely on what it is that you are trying to accomplish with your site. After all the way that you would design a site is different from the way that you would design a site that was intended to pass on information. Understanding the ultimate goal of the website is an important step.
The next thing that needs to be done is that we need to determine what the most important parts of the site are. On any websites there are going to be some sites that contain the information that you want your visitors to see and other pages that are used primarily to funnel your visitors to the pages that are more important. It is important that we know which are which so that we can get visitors to the spots where you want them to go. This requires a knowledge of what you are trying to convey to your visitors.
The next step in the design process is to lay out the navigation of the site. This is one of the most important parts of the job because people are not going to stay at the site if they can't find what they are looking for. That means that we have to layout the site in a way that is easy to navigate. Doing this will give us a good idea of how many pages we are going to need to and how they will need to be connected together so that people can get from one to the other in the easiest way possible.
The final step of the process is to decide on what kind of look the site should have. This is in large part about aesthetics but you do have to factor in things like branding to make sure that the look of your site fits in with your company's brand. It is also at this point that we will look at adding things like rich applications or flash intros that will make your site more appealing to your visitor. We also have to make sure that while we are doing this that your site is properly optimized for the search engines so that people can find your site.