Support FAQ For Your Website
8 Steps to Planning Your Website
Step 1
Setting a Budget
How Much is a Website?
Building a website is like buying a car. The range of options and costs associated with buying a car are actually a very good comparison to the cost of a website. It's possible to buy a decent used car for under $2,000 that should be perfectly adequate to get you where you need to go. Similarly, buying a car can run the gamut from a bare bones compact for under $5,000 to a high end sports car for $80,000 plus. Beyond the desired car's look and style, there are many other considerations that will affect its cost like how many people fit in, how fast it goes, what options are included, etc.
The following items can all have influence on a project's budget, just to name a few: Visual design (what are the look and feel requirements?)
- Site size (how many pages will the site contain?)
- Project scope (what type of information will the site pages contain?)
- Special functionality (are there any unusual services that the site will provide?)
- Site traffic volume (how many visitors is the site expected to handle?)
- Custom business logic (will there be the need for programming special new features specifically for this project?)
- Development timetable (what is the site's expected launch date?)
- Project team (will the client guide the project by a committee or a single point of contact?)
- Integration (will the site need to connect to any other pieces of software?)
You need to establish budgetary guidelines with your website designer before the project is started.
There are a wide range of solutions that can be tailored to your specific needs - you need to provide appropriate financial guidance so that your web designer can select the best web site within your budget.
Budget Determines How Your Site Will Look
A very basic one page site with nice graphics can be constructed for a few hundred dollars whereas a 10 page site with dynamic menus, videos and feed back forms can cost thousands . When building your site remember that the sky's the limit for good design and functionality.
Know what you want to spend before calling a designer and then ...just tell them!
Step 2
Surf the Internet
Take a look at your competitor’s web sites.
- Was information easy to find or did you run around in circles.
- Were photos slow to load?
Make Notes While Surfing
While you are on the web, make notes of what you do and do not like i.e. background texture, background style, general layout, font style, navigation bar placement and image style (beveled, framed, edges faded out and so on)
Step 3
Target Your Audience
You need to determine to what audience your web site will be targeted. Because of the potential global audience for a web site, you must know how to target your web site message! Both the artistic style and nature of your web site's content are highly dependent upon this information.
Not only does your audience determine your content, but its preferences influence your visual-design requirements as well. The colors, layout, content and number of pages for your site may vary, depending upon the target audience. Without at least a general idea of you potential audience, it is difficult to know what type of site to create.
How Will It Be Seen?
It's always safest to consider the lowest common denominator in terms of users and internet browsers for a web site to reach the largest audience. However, catering to a small percentage of potential viewers on outdated browsers may cause a site to become either too costly or too old-fashioned as some of the advanced features available today couldn't be used.
Step 4
Selecting a Theme
The theme is the unifying idea on which everything else rests. Sometimes, it is simple and obvious .
One site might have a theme of great prices and saving money, while another may have a theme of high quality products and snob appeal.
What colours represent your organization? Do you wish a whole new look? Bright? Soft? Inviting or startling? Just like watching TV, colours do affect site visitors
Use a Chart to Select Your Colors
Use this Web Color Selector to choose a color theme for your site. Once you have determined the colors that you desire write the "HEX" values down and provide them to your designer. By completing this process yourself you will avoid all of the guesswork on the part of your designer.
Step 5
Start Gathering Your Materials
When you've determined your site's needs, create an outline around the themes you want to promote. Remember that each theme of the outline is a page that needs content - text and images that will help educate your visitors.
Decide on The Actual Content of Your Site
- Your Company's Information: This is your opportunity to market your organization.
- State the Obvious : Who you are; What you do; Where, When & Why you do it. Also add how visitors should contact you - by mail, phone, email etc.
- Product / Service Information: A complete description of the products or services your business offers, including photos and descriptive text if available. If your product involves technical specifications, instructions, customer support, or other information useful to your customers, compile full descriptive information of this type for your web site.
- Feedback & Ordering: Be prepared to discuss how you want to gather customer feedback and product order or service inquiry information. There are a variety of ways to do this from simple email links to complex forms.
- FAQ’s: Frequently asked questions with your answers.
- Links: Info and resource links for your visitors to access.
Start By Collecting Your Information
- History and Philosophy of your organization
- Press releases and Articles written about you or your company
- Testimonials
- Contact information
- Product or services brochures and Product catalogues
- Other product information, prices and pictures or photos.
- Frequently asked questions
- Music and Video clips
- Links to other web sites
- Information about your services, your experience and background.
- Geographic area where you provide services
- Any services you offer which are unique, different or better than your competitions.
- What are these services and how will they benefit your potential customer?
Step 6
Organize Your Information
The purpose of your site trickles down through each step that you take in creating it.
- Divide the information you gathered into Sections - Each Section should be at least one separate web page.
- Each page should discuss a different concept or idea - A page should contain enough information to fill a single screen but should not be longer than five screens.
- You want the title of each page to specify how it supports the site's purpose - The textual content of each page needs to lead naturally into some specific aspect of the topic that furthers your goal.
- Include a brief summary of your web site on the home page.
Step 7
Enter Your Text
Use a Text Editor
- Enter the text you want to appear on your web site in a text editor like Notepad or Wordpad and not a word processor such as "Microsoft Word".
- Each web page should be a separate document. Always put the most important information at the top of each web page. Some readers will not scroll through a web page to read all of the information.
- Use headings to emphasize your titles and subtitles. Headings allow readers to find information of interest quickly without having to read the entire page.
Step 8
Set a Specific Timeframe
Projected Launch Date
This should be made very clear from the outset. Depending on the complexity of your site, it can take considerable time to develop. Allow enough time for development and collecting information. If your timetable is not realistic for your site design, then use a temporary solution that gets you "online" within your timeframe with a reduced presence.
Maintenance of your website should never end
Maintaining a website is just as important as building it in the first place! Unfortunately, most people put much more effort into the initial design and launch of a site than they do in keeping the content fresh and keeping the site growing to best serve all visitors.
It is imperative that you maintain a commitment to posting accurate, timely information online. If people who visit your site find that the information never changes, they will stop accessing it.
