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I’ve been enthralled in the political and economic issues facing our nation recently. However, I did realize an excellent practice that I’ve been doing in my website and advertising designs that I wanted to share with designers and consultants alike.

Most websites operate on top of some sort of content management system or other engine. Whether they are ecommerce or not, the template/skin that a website has is the single greatest piece of the website. That’s not to say that the technology choice is not important. Certainly WordPress is the best blogging system in the world, but throw a Theme on it that is difficult to navigate and it won’t matter. Same holds true for ecommerce. You can go spend tens of thousands of dollars on an ecommerce system (why, I’m not sure… but you could) and it still won’t make a difference if you don’t have a template conducive for ecommerce.

When a client sees a template I’ve been working with a designer on for the first time, they often ask questions about why so much text is placed on the home page or why certain boxes are in place when they don’t make much sense. The reason behind this is that when you finally split your template into the HTML elements that will make up the actual website template, you need to have all of those elements defined in advanced. You can certainly add them later, but it is always much better to have as much upfront as possible. These odd elements may not make their way onto the homepage, but they certainly will be there on some landing pages.

Bulleted lists should be designed, callouts determined, basic content markup, highlights, etc. It should all be designed upfront to make content development much easier when you get to that point.

Ultimately, the client shouldn’t have to worry about whether they are being used on landing pages or not. They have more important things they should be focusing on. The bottom line of their business for starters. Again, this is where solid communication makes a big difference. By being able to communicate with the client about the really business impact of the final layout (not just designs), allows the business owner to see how this work is going to benefit his/her business. It also helps reassure them that they chose the right guy for the job.