Questions:
Welcome
Starting, or re-designing a website?
Here are some questions to ask:
* What is the purpose of my website?
* Who is my website focused on?
* How complex will it be?
* What is my budget?
* Will I maintain the site or pay someone ?
Whether your website is for business or personal interest,
there are a number of things to consider before you
start building your site.
The first step should be deciding on the purpose of the website.
How Complex?
What website technologies do I need?
What Website Tools Do I Need?
The website tools required will depend on the type of
website you are building and what type of audience you
have decided to target and accommodate.
Website Planning for Sites Involved in
Ecommerce
Website planning with regards to e-commerce would have to
consider website technologies such as shopping carts, secure
servers, customer payments and shipping issues.
* Are you hosting your own shopping cart or using a
third party shopping cart?
* How are my visitors going to pay for the merchandise?
* Does my web host have secure servers or will a third
party service be required?
* How is shipping to be handled?
Communication Website Technologies
Website technologies for communication with the target
audience would include email, auto responders, email
forwarding, mailing lists, guestbooks, forums, bulletin
boards, chatrooms and/or blogs.
Advanced website technologies may be at an additional
cost. The type of database, web programming type and
whether FrontPage extensions are used can all affect the
cost of website hosting.
Who Is Your Audience?
Who do I want to attract to the website?
After analyzing the purpose of your website, figuring out who
your audience is next.
Who usually buys your product or looks for your information?
The general public, school teachers, business people?
Knowing this will help you figure out what style to use. Here are
some style ideas:
* Professional for business people,
* Simple or elegant for the general public,
* Fun or artistic for school teachers.
Targeting Business People
What kind of things would a business person visiting your
website be looking for?
* Product specifications?
* Benefits and/or features?
* Product availability or costs?
Designing for the General Public
Is your target audience "computer savvy" or are they going have
little or no computer experience? Are they:
* used to surfing or someone new to the web?
* used to saving files offered?
* able to download a plug-in to view your site?
What is Your Audience Using to View Your Website?
Website planning also needs to look at what the audience uses to
look at our site:
* Computer or hand-held device?
* Type of internet connection - slow or fast?
* Browser type and version?
Why am I building this website?
* Am I building this site to sell product?
* To share information?
* Or as a place for friends, family or people
with a similar interest to meet?
Knowing these things at the start will help figure out the
style, its complexity, and the budget required for your website.
Making Money with a Website
A site built to charge money for product, will require a
secure way for the visitor to pay for the items, and a
shopping cart if you have a lot of things for them to
purchase. There are a number of ways to do this,
some are complex, some just require a small fee and
letting someone else collects the information and money.
Sharing Information
With a focus on sharing information, your website
won't require a shopping cart, but may have other needs.
For example, it may require the ability to show a large number
of photos.
Meeting Place for Family and Friends
Websites designed as a meeting place, would have a less f
ormal feel. For this type of site you could also consider if
your family and friends will be permitted to automatically
add to the content of your website. Again, this would require
additional features from your website hosting.
Website Budget
After figuring out the purpose, audience and complexity of
your website, next comes the the budget. Here are a few things
to consider while developing your website budget.
* How are the webpages going to be built and maintained?
* What website graphics are required?
* Getting the word out ?
* What type of hosting costs will I have?
Who is Building Website?
The cost of building the site can be in dollars - to pay someone,
or in time - if you build it. You can either pay a professional or
spend your time on your website. Make sure that if you are
going to spend your time, that you allocate a reasonable dollar
value and sufficient time in your budget.
Then there's the maintenance of the site
If you are going to build the web pages yourself do you have
the knowledge, time and technologies in place to make your
own web pages or will you have to invest time and money to
aquire the proper skills, software and technologies?
Website Content
Next in the website budget, consider website content creation
and management.
Website content is the words the visitor and search engines see.
The website content should be information, not just a bunch of
links to other sites or images.
Who will create the initial website content
If you have done any website marketing research, you will
know that lots of quality content is important to the success of
your website. The content should be updated with new fresh
content often to give visitors a reason to return. As well, it is a
reason for search engines to keep visiting the site.
Who will create the website content now and in the future? Yourself
or someone else?
Website Maintenance
This decision will be based upon the abilities of you or your
staff. How computer savy are you? Believe it or not, you don't
really have to be that computer literate to maintain a website.
The majority of changes to a website, after it is designed, is the
changing of text and images.
Changing text is the easy part specially now with in invention of
‘blog’ sites such as Wordpress or self-administered web
management systems such as Joomla!. Or it can be done with
programs that are native to you computer. If the majority of
changes to your site are text related, you might consider this
option. It will reduce your monthly costs and give you more
control over how quickly changes are done.
Images require a little more knowledge. If your sight is image
intensive and will require some sort of image editing program
and knowledge of image sizing and such. If this is the case, you
might consider paying someone with the experience required.
Usually, when you pay someone to update your site you will
either pay a montlhly fee or a per-change or page fee.