Starting a web project can be daunting, especially if this is your first website. This series will help you simplify the web making process and organize your thoughts. Your web designer/developer, whether it be a professional, your son/daughter or yourself, will thank you. I’ll walk you through 5 steps and at the end you will have a well formulated plan for a website.
What Are Your Goals
The goals you have for your website will guide you, and your designer, to create the proper page structure and choose features that help accomplish your goals. Obviously, this is a very important step, so be sure to take a good moment to think it out.
- Here’s a good exercise to help you:
- What is my main purpose online?
- Selling goods
- Giving information
- What is your business’s main source on income?
- What are my customers’/clients’ needs and goals?
- Find services or products
- Gain information about products/services
- Leave a comment/review
- What are your secondary goals?
- Marketing Email List
- Improve business reputation
Write out your goals
Keep your goals real and realistic. Here are some realistic goals:
- Finish within 3 months
- Create a shopping cart that allow customers to find information about my products and purchase them.
- Easy to update with new products
- Must keep track of available inventory
- Capture emails for a weekly newsletter.
Be sure to order your goals from most important to least important! This will help the designer know where to give more importance. It will also help you with your budget; helping you realize what you should put on hold and what you can develop, but that’s in a later post.
Keep it Light
Keep your list short. No more than 3-5 goals. You’re already very busy. Don’t shoot for the moon unless you know you can accomplish all goals consistently and with high quality.
Keeping the list of goals you want to accomplish short will focus your site and simplify the structure and user interface. It also reduces the amount of work you need to do and more importantly reduce the cost of the site.
KISS part 2 will delve into your budget concerns and make sure you’ll have cash left to market the site to get the visitors you want.
