Welcome to the second post in my series on the web design process for the responsive site for “Daisy Plates”, an imaginary boutique catering business! Please check out part one before we get started if you like.

Steps 1 and 2 of the process were as follows, and together they fit nicely into one post:

Step 1: research similar catering sites

I checked out at least five sites to do with catering, from small companies to larger-scaled businesses.

• I took notice of their names and site designs, but also of the various sections of content on their sites and how they were organized.
• I paid attention to what was on their front page, since that would give me an idea of the most important info which would be particularly of interest when scaling down for smaller devices.
• I started to keep a tally of the common sections on the site, like services, about us, testimonials, menus, etc. as well as bits of info like hours of operation, contact info, privacy policy and features like links to social networking sites. This would later help me determine the sections of my site.

Step 2: determine a name for the catering company

Oh I thought about this for a while, and it was a lot of fun doing it. I decided that the owner of the company would be a female chef, and that she did catering, but also had a small storefront, where she would offer a dine-in area as well as a bakery and food-related gifts. I kept thinking “boutique”, “urban” but “green” (she would use local ingredients whenever possible), “cozy”, “fine dining”, “light”, “fresh” and lots of other descriptive words as I rolled concepts around in my head. I started to think of names and would check the Web to see what were already taken (even though this is a fictional site, I didn’t want to run into any issues).

Along the way I came up with names like “Teaspoon Delights”, “Sweet Treats”, “Petite Treats”, “Treats n’ Eats”, “Petite Plates” and many many others. At the time, I was also trying out a lot of recipes from the cookbook The Looneyspoons Collection, the authors of which also had a book called “Crazy Plates”. I dare say I had this name in my head somewhere when I finally came up with the name “Daisy Plates”. I decided that the chef would be named Daisy Ipsum and “Daisy Plates” was also a name I could not seem to find being used anywhere. It was cute, fresh, food-related and lent itself to some design ideas immediately. “Daisy Plates” was the winner!

Up next, creating the logo and determining the color scheme!