Web Portals : DEsign a winning corporate portal

1. Homework is complete. You've got all your data, now work on designing a corporate portal, intranet or website that is intuitive, clean and organized. Take the good points from your usability sessions and be sure to recreate them in the new version. Be sure you understood what problems the old model had, and do your best to not replicate them going forward. Nothing is worse than making a bad situation worse. Sketch out your corporate portal architecture using Microsoft Visio, Adobe Fireworks (for layer capabilities), or in some familiar modeling software.
   
2. Verify your architecture models with some of the end-users you met with through the discovery stage of your planning (steps5, 6, 7). Using either a formal presenation method or one-on-one meetings, have them review what you've created. If you have an in-house Web Designer, be sure they are there as well. They will most likely be modifying the designs later based on the feedback you receive.
   
   
3. Placement is key. You took the time back in step 6 to tag each content element and assign attributes to it. Work some of the content into your new corporate portal, intranet or website design and again, have end-users review the flow, placement and functionality. This will need to be an itterative cycle as you develop the pages. Always, always, always have heavy end-users involvement in this stage. They are people who will make or break your project. You've already invested time, money and people in the project, don't let your efforts go to waste.
   
   
4. Create color palettes and icons for your corporate portal. These can be signifiers of actionable items on the pages, or they can be used to represent key features on your pages. Be consistent in your designs. There are many online resources for choosing good color patterns and for selecting icons.
   
   
5. User Interaction. Again have your users review and comment on what work and what doesn't. Some experts may argue that too much user intervention will kill a project, or substantially stahl it. In all the projects I've led or took part in, when an enterprise portal, intranet or website was designed with little end-user involvement, the project was not welcomed by the users and had to undergo a large deal of rework - which caused more costs (time, money nd resources to be redeployed).
   
   
6. Make it personable. Nothing is worse for a business user of your website than to deliver a solution that is robotic, lacks personality or warmth. Display attributes such as their name, a welcome message or allow them to customize their views. Though mainly these features are related more to corporate portals, even the slightest change to an intranet or website can give users that special feeling. If you decide on an corporate portal deployment , be sure to capitalize on the major benefits of the system, such as personalization, system integration, single-sign-on, content management and remote access.
   
   
7. Get er' Done. Complete the most impactful areas of your corporate portal, intranet or website first. Hold some pre-launch testing to verify that the design is still solid and that users can intuitively navigate and use the system. If they're happy, roll-out some sections while completing the final items. This will give you time to hear how the intial roll-out went and what people think about the new look & feel.


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