Planning Your Site - A Worksheet

Plan Now for Success Later!

The most important part of getting an effective web site online is the planning that goes into it before the design process even begins. This article is intended for those who are planning to create their first site - but equally applies to anyone planning to update or redesign a web site.

This is a very detailed worksheet designed to assist you in formulating a plan for your site and/or a request for a quotation. It asks a number of questions to which you will need answers before you can get your Web site project off the ground. Answer them and you are well on the way to having a detailed plan of action.

Planning your site

• Overview
• Design and Development
• Hosting
• Building the Site
• Maintenance and updating
• Cost

Please feel free to print this page and use it in your planning. You can contact us anytime if you need any assistance.

Overview

What is the purpose of the site?
Decide, in order of importance, what you wish the site to do - a good site will be clear in its purpose so not too many objectives should be chosen. Make a list of your objectives, in order of importance.

Some suggestions include:

• Explain your products and services
• Provide a service online
• Sell a product or products online
• Deliver news or information
• Make an announcement
• Create an online customer support area
• Create a forum that addresses specific topics or interests
• Serve the needs of existing clients
• Bring in new clients to your business
• Provide information for your staff/suppliers

How would you define success for this site?

Come up with a short and clear statement against which you can measure your site's performance. Make it a concrete one - for example "Getting more clients" is no good at all, "Increasing enquires by 25% in the first 6 months" is far better.

Who do you want to visit your site?

• What is the primary audience your site is aimed at?
• Who might be looking for your site/services/products?
• Who might be interested if they reach your site accidentally?

What will you offer on your site?

Make a list of all categories of content of functionality you wish the site to include. Some examples might be:

• Company Information
• Details of your services
• Product Listings
• Online ordering
• Online support for existing customers
• Discussion/bulletin boards
• Applications chat/interactive support
• Extensive Links
• etc
   

How do you plan to bring visitors back to your site?

• What will be interesting enough to lure them back?
• What fresh content/regular news are you likely to have?
• What functionality will be useful enough to bring them back?

How do you plan to market the site to bring in visitors in the first place?

There is a common saying "Build it and they will come". It's nonsense. Unless you tell 'them' where it is, your precious site may very well sit there, unvisited and unloved.

It is important that you allocate a portion of your budget to the initial marketing of your site. While there are inexpensive or even free ways of doing this, it is enormously helpful to spend some money judiciously in establishing your site.

Here are some ways to get the word out:

• Submissions to: Search Engines, General Directories, Industry-Specific Directories
• Getting links to your site
• Banner advertising
• Paid search engine advertising
• Press Releases
• Marketing in Newsgroups/via E mail
• Business cards, Letterheads etc
• Offline media advertising
• Mail shots, Flyers
• Information at your place of business

Design and Development

What will you call the site?

• Do you have an existing domain name?
• Is your business name available as a domain name?
• If not are you able to come up with a good alternative?
• Are you planning on a .com, .net, .org or .ie name? Or another suffix or number of those?

What will your visitors look for?

What keywords or phrases do you think clients, and potential clients, might use to find your site? (List as many as you can think of)

How do you want your site to look?

• Do you have a preference for colours?
• Do you have existing artwork? eg logos, photos, items used in brochures etc
• Will you need new graphics created? What sort?
• List 3 or 4 sites you like and say why you like them
• List 3 or 4 sites you do not like and say what you dislike about them
• Rate the sites of 3 businesses similar to yours - stating clearly what you like and dislike about them.

What sort of text content are you planning?

Will you need mainly short pages or do you have a large body of text based information to impart?

Will you need audio?

Will you need video?

Will you need a form or forms?

• Just a contact form
• Extensive forms on many subjects
• Specialised forms such as assessment/application forms
• Forms which are used to transmit secure information
• E-mail Auto responders
   

Site Hosting

How are you planning to host your site?

• Hosted with an ISP without a Domain Name? (www.eircom.net/yoursite)
• Purchasing a Domain Name? (www.yoursite.ie)
• Hosting with a domain name by the ISP who provide your internet  connection
• Hosting by a specialist hosting company.
• Don't know yet

Do you need several/many different e-mail addresses?
eg theboss@yoursite.com, info@yoursite.com

More information here.

Building the Site

Will the site be developed in house?

• Is there already someone in house with the necessary expertise?
• What amount of training and/or time away from others duties would this person (or these people)  require initially?
• What is the cost of this time/training?
• If this person runs into difficulties is there someone you can call on for assistance?

Will the site be out sourced to a web developer?

• Have you chosen a developer?
• Does the developers previous work impress you?
• Have you contacted previous customers of the developer to see how satisfied they were with the overall service they received?

Who will be responsible for gathering information and getting it to the developer?

• Consider getting a team together specifically for this purpose
• Appoint ONE person to liaise between the team and the developer

Who will review ongoing progress on the site as it is developed and have the authority to approve it?

Who will sign off on the completed project?

Maintenance and Updating

How often will the site need to be updated?

• Will some sections need more regular updating?

How do you plan to update content?

• Do you need a content management system (CMS) for easy updating with little technical knowledge?
• Are you planning to update the site using proprietary software - such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver? 
• Will training be required in the use of the CMS or software?
• Will updating be done in house or via a maintenance contract?

What about background maintenance tasks?

• Regular checking of internal and external links
• Search Engine status monitoring
• Managing advertising/marketing
• Checking the competition
• Overseeing content sourcing, editing and approval

Cost

Split these into initial and ongoing costs. You will need to enquire about both when looking for quotes.

Initial Costs

• Design and Development
• Domain registration
• Hosting set up
• Initial Marketing

For an estimate of the likely costs of developing your site, please see our Instant Estimate Generator.

On Going Costs

• Maintenance and updating
• Marketing
• Hosting
• Additional development costs if adding to site

© InKK Design. 2002-2010. All Rights Reserved.

This article may be freely distributed provided the copyright notice remains intact.