This is another one of those "would you" rants ...
Here we go:
Would you ask an architect to design a house for you but not mention how many rooms the house needs to have?
Would you ask a tailoring shop to make you a suit without letting them know your size?
Would you ask your car dealership to order parts for your car without telling them the make and model?
Would you order window blinds without giving the store the dimensions?
Would you ask a restaurant to serve you 'a meal' without specifying which meal?
Would you ask a designer to design your website without letting them know the number of pages and sections?
Yes, seemingly.
There are many rants here about the importance of getting your website's blueprint right before your full-graphics website is built. Yet despite the absurdity of the questions above, we are still asked "why do you need a blueprint navigation signoff before designing the site? Can't we see how it will look? Why do we have to do that boring blueprint first?"
Well, the questions above answer that really, but let's be more specific. You can appreciate that there's a world of difference between a five-page website and a site with ten sections, each section having at least ten pages and those ten pages having at least three subsections - can't you? So it's pretty obvious that the design considerations are going to be very different.
Then there are other factors to take into account, such as:
How often is the site going to be updated?
Is there going to be any special software added to the site such as blogging software?
Will the site be an e-commerce site?
Will the site have a content management system installed?
Is the content organized to its best advantage?
What is the goal of this website?
Is this website user-friendly?
Is this website search engine-friendly?
Is this website accessible according to section 508 of the ADA?
Can this website be navigated correctly in all browsers, on all platforms?
Who is the site's primary audience?
What is the call to action?
Can the site be used on a cellphone?
Will the site have flash? PDF downloads? Images supplied by the client or stock images?
... and a few hundred other questions.
Until we have the blueprint well under way, we don't know the answers to these questions. But go ahead, design the site! Yeah. Right.
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Blueprint signoffs
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