Mind Map

Mind Map – these are very useful technique that is used by many website designers. This technique is used to get a look and feel for what your website will look like and its best to create a mind map before you get started in building your website. You can fully plan your website using a mind-map which is a process to layout your site on paper.

Some people use mind-mapping software to do this process but I enjoy making mine drawing it on paper. Once you have finished doing this process my suggestion is to leave it alone for a day or so then go back to it and review and updated it if it’s required.

With a few reviews this will let you plan and organise your website.

The best approach to getting your website structure correctly is to draw up a mindmap. I use an A3 Visual Diary to draw mine on and I might need to make a few attempts but I do this until I get it right. My suggestion is to review it a few times before you start building your template.

Above is an example of what a mindmap would look like.

For this example I have the:

• Homepage
• Products Main Page (Tier 2) (4 pages linked – Tier 3)
• Software Demo Page (Tier 2) (3 pages linked – Tier 3)
• Support Page (Tier 2) (2 pages linked – Tier 3)

Once this process is complete you will need to think about the size of your webpage. Will you be catering to meet the needs of visitors that have a screen resolution of 800×600 pixels?

The advice I can give you is to set out your website with a table no more between 720-800 pixels wide. This way whatever setting your visitor has they will be able to view your website.