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Some thinking and planning on your part will help in designing a site that meets your needs and your clients' needs. Planning ahead also means:
- Fewer revisions
- Money saved
- A consistent image for your company
Here are several things to consider as we prepare to develop a site for you. Keep in mind that this is written for companies but most of it is applicable to personal sites as well.
Who Are You
- What does your organization do?
- What is your mission or vision?
- What products or services do you offer?
- What do you do that others don't?
- Why should someone use your services?
- What are your key messages?
Who is Your Audience
- Is it clients?
- Is it friends?
- Are you a money making venture or a not-for-profit organization?
What is Your Look
- Do you have a logo?
- If so, is it available in digital format?
- If not, should you have one?
- What do you like in a website? Show me some examples if you can.
- What do you dislike in a website? Show me some examples of this, too.
- Do you prefer horizontal or vertical navigational bars?
- Do you have special fonts or graphics that you want to use?
- Do you have permission to use those items?
- Do you have copy of material you want to include on the site?
- What do you want people to say about your site?
What makes You Different
- What makes you different from your competitors?
- How do you want your site to differ from your competitors?
- Why would someone stay at your site?
- Why would someone buy from your company or pay attention to your message?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and their web sites?
What is Your Contact Information
- Where are you located (if that is important)?
- Can you provide a map of your location?
- Will you want contact information on the site?
- Will you be using people's names, or generic contacts?
- If you have several contact people, do you have short descriptions of what they do?
- Do you have a fax number?
- Do you have a toll-free number?
- Don't forget to provide the little things, like the area code and the postal code
- Do you have email addresses?
- Do you intend to sell something on-line?
- If so, have you looked into forms of payment?
- Marketing and Promotion
- Do you have a marketing plan for the site?
- Are you going to market it yourself or hire a professional to advise you?
- Search engines
- You will need a short (25 words) description of your company, organization, or site, to submit to search engines
- When writing this, use keywords that describe your company, preferably ones that are not common
Provide your website developer with the following:
- Photographs in .jpg and .gif
- Do you have people's permission to reproduce photos they took or photos of them?
- Samples of brochures, pamphlets, flyers, newsletter, posters
- Make sure these are up to date
- Clean copy of your logo and any other graphic art your company or organization uses
- Text to be included on the site
- Make sure it is edited and up to date
- Use simple, short sentences (they are easier to read than dense text)
- Use bullets
- Use headers
- For tips on writing for the web, see e-write and Writing for the Web
- Any other media that you want on your site
- Any other organizations you want to link to or provide contact information to Maintenance
- Who do you intend to use as a host?
- Who do you intend to use as an ISP?
- How often will you want the site updated?
- Discuss the process and fees for this with your developer
- How will you provide material for updates?
- Will you be doing your own editing of updated materials?
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