Application: What is the purpose of this project and who is the audience?  These two questions are key to the first step of the design process.  The purpose must be clearly and explicitly defined.  If it is not then the design will remain in a state of flux, constantly changing as different parties fight for control.  The audience must also be clearly defined.  The audience drives how the project will look, and how information is presented.  Adults have significantly different requirements than youth for interacting with the application.  It is impossible to target widely different audiences simultaneously.  Fortunately that is hardly ever a project goal.

What is in a name?  Plenty, if you expect visitors!  There are two avenues for people to learn about your site: a search engine or good old-fashioned advertising.  Whether you have a basic site or Web-based application, the domain name needs to be pushed as much as possible with all other advertising.  That includes billboards, newspapers, brochures, television and radio.  If the domain name doesn't reflect the site purpose and if it is not short and easy to jot down or remember, then even the people who intended to visit will probably never make it.

Do not build an application around a host, select a host for the application!  It is truly amazing the number of times that people choose a hardware or software platform and then design their application around it.  The features of an application must be decided upon, it must be designed, sized, and the underlying components such as .Net or Java are selected.  Then, when the criteria for the hosting environment are known an appropriate environment may be selected.  My father always taught us to "use the right tool for the job!"

Graphics make sites and applications.  Long gone are the days when a customer expected black and white, text and a picture of your product.  Whether it is a basic Web site or a dynamic application, the graphical components set the professional tone.  Graphics as much as text help steer a user through a site or control an application.  Graphics help set the mood that a visitor feels: warm, cool, relaxed or excited, detached or involved, whatever the experience is meant to be.

Relational databases are the modern core to applications.  While the tools to build and use relational databases have become simpler and automated, the fundamentals of designing a database often fall by the wayside.  The data structure must be analyzed, sorted into tables, relationships defined and appropriate indexes created.  How the application uses the data has a direct bearing on its organization.  Analyzing the data as the major part of a system requires experience and skill, both of which Smallrock can provide.

Every Web site is an online sales application.  After all, every site is trying to convey something!  However, Web sites directly selling a product require some special attention.  Selling a product means that the site is an advertising brochure where visitors expect to quickly and easily locate products and information.  To sell a product the site must deliver, so there has to be a real warehouse and product handling mechanism behind the site.  And security becomes a major issue: to protect the site from an attack of false purchases, to prevent competitors from blocking customer access, and to protect consumer information as it is passed over the Internet.

Security is a faster and faster dance between opposing forces.  There are many parallels between the worlds of physical and digital security, but with digital security it is much easier to mount an attack without from anywhere in the world.  That means as soon as a new safeguard is in place, thousands of attackers are immediately searching for the cracks in the armor.  Application security requires a commitment to understanding these technologies and designing for them: viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, denial of service attacks, data encryption, digital signatures, digital IDs, authentication, and many others.

Traffic:  understanding how visitors get to a site and how they use it is crucial for adapting to their needs.  All hosting environments are capable of logging information about where visitors come from, how long they stay, how often they return, and what parts of a site they visit the most or how they use an application.  This information is critical to determining where to make an investment in improving service and their experience.  It may be that little used areas of a site or application are not worth having, or it may be that visitors avoid them because they are difficult or complicated.  Only careful analysis of the data can provide the answers to improving service.