Planning your website
Planning is the most important step in any project. If you don't know what you're building and why you're building it then your chances of creating a successful web presence are very low.
Why do you want a website?
What are your goals in creating a website? Do you want to provide current or potential customers with information? Do you want to sell products in an online store?
Once you have defined why you want a website you should think about how you will measure if your goals have been met. For instance, if your goal is to generate new business for your services then you need to think about how you will measure the new leads generated by your website.
Who is your target audience?
Understanding your target audience allows your website to be designed to appeal to those people. For instance a more conservative design will appeal more to an older age group but not to your hip and trendy target market.
Also try thinking about what your users goals are on your website? Why are they visiting your website? Do they want to buy a product? Do they want to find out who stocks your products?
What content do you want on the site?
What message are you trying to get across and what information do your users want to see? Try thinking about the main pages on your site and what information they need to contain in order for both you and your users to be able to meet their respective goals. For some pointers on what information you should think about including see What content should I include on my website?
What do you want the site to be able to do?
Do you want your users to be able to contact you? Do you want your users to be able to get an online quote or make a booking? Do you want to sell products online?
Where is the site contents coming from?
Once you have an outline of what content needs to be on the site you need to decide where it is going to come from. Who is going to write the content for the site? Do you need photographs of your products and are they available? If you need maps, where are you going to get them and do you have the correct copyright to use them? How long is it going to take for you to gather all the necessary content? A design for a website is based on presenting the content and so for a design to be successful the content must be available before the visual design can be completed.
How do you plan to promote your site?
How do you plan to get visitors to your site? What types of traditional and online advertising/marketing will you do? Do you need search engine optimisation services, link partnerships, banner advertising or other forms of online marketing? Will you contact existing clients to tell them about your new website? What about a press release? Do you need to update your stationary, brochures etc?
How do you plan to get repeat visitors?
The chances of a first time visitor to your site buying anything are low so how are you going to get them to return? Will you have special offers? Provide a newsletter? Run competitions?
How will you update and maintain your website?
Do you have the time, inclination and skills necessary to maintain the site yourself, do you need a content management system or will you outsource the maintenance?
Once a site is launched how are you going to measure it's success and make the necessary tweaks? How are you going to update the content to keep it fresh and keep visitors coming back?
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