Storyboarding and Prototyping Web Sites, Intranets, Web Applications...

Building a new site?

May be you have heard of or used wireframes, storyboards, HTML prototypes - a visual way of representing a site before you build it?

We call them "storyboards". As in l-i-v-e-S-T-O-R-Y-B-O-A-R-D. Why "live"? Because the successful web process is iterative - we start with ideas, create a rough sitemap, add placeholder pages and drafts of content, design layouts and stylesheets, code components, tweak, revise and rewrite until the storyboard becomes the real live site.

You can create a quick storyboard, a fully navigable HTML prototype, in minutes with liveSTORYBOARD. Best of all, you can reuse all the data that passes the test of the iterations.

A successful site doesn't stop with the initial planning and prototyping either, this very same process continues through the life of the site as you keep your content fresh or tweak parts based on visitor feedback or as you learn new ways to better accomplish your goals. So, share with team members, rewrite, move pages and directories around and let liveSTORYBOARD do the grunt work behind the scenes.

"Vanilla" storyboard layout and functionality templates come included with liveSTORYBOARD. If you have built web sites before, you know how beneficial storyboards are. Common uses and benefits include:

• Sharing info architecture with your team

• Providing a clear and tangible input for design and development

• The ability to better visualize how your site will be organized and navigated by your visitors before any development and design expenses

• Figuring out information architecture and ironing out any issues before launching a site and getting it indexed by search engines to avoid broken links

• Enabling usability testing early on

If you want to add to or modify the styles of your live storyboard, simply tweak the CSS to your liking. Additional templates are also simple to create by modifying the default, or writing new XSLT stylesheets.

Porting an existing site to liveSTORYBOARD?

Why not go through the strengths and weaknesses of your existing site and fix anything before re-launching. Of course, simply using liveSTORYBOARD is a great step forward as you can improve your site's usability through the multiple navigation utilities, you will be ensuring consistent design, you will produce search friendly, valid semantic markup.

But it's the content that is king, right? Are your visitors finding the information they need quickly and easily? Are they taking the actions you were hoping they would when you built the site? Is your copy clear and persuasive? It's never too late to refresh your copy, the Information Architecture, the design or function of your site.