I’ve been talking to a client who wants to build a local search directory.  We both had our first questions.

Her: I’d like to know what it’s going to look like… I’d like to visualize it… The logo…

Me: What information are you going to be providing? How are you going to drive traffic to your site? What do you want people to do once they get to your site?

That’s a big difference!

I’m sure if she spent her time building a variety of different sites and working with a wide variety of clients, she would have come to the same conclusion I did:  ”design” (graphics and layout) come AFTER a thorough discussion of the value a site is going to provide to specific users. If you go that route, then the site generally builds itself.