Plan a Great Website to have a Great Website

Sit down and write out the purpose of your website. This is a summary of the key reasons for having a website.

Are you selling goods, products or services online via an ecommerce website? Are you an author or Blogger looking to build an audience? Are you a contractor looking to generate construction leads? Are you a programmer looking to sell your software? Are you a doctor looking to promote your medical practice? Are you looking to build the next Four Square or Face Book?

Below is a sample summation for the fictitious website PoliticalFauxPas.com

Political Faux Pas is a satirical website where I will post comments, excerpts and videos of past and present goofs and mistakes that political candidates have made. I will allow commenting on my posts and allow users who join my site for free to post their own stories.

II. Identify your website audience

Now it's time to consider what part of the online readership you want to capture. Will this be a website that pokes fun at the Republicans, Democrats or all political parties?

The logo and general designing (look and feel) of your website will be a factor as well. Don't get hung up on too many bells and whistles such as animation or sound effects.

This all goes back to the core message of your website. You don't need lots of hoopla to attract visitors. Having a successful website is like writing a great book. If it's a good read, then word will spread about your website. Otherwise your website will end up in the online bargain bin where websites go to die.

Keep it clean, simple and concise.

Maybe your viewership will contain folks over 60? For example, a website about 'Reverse Mortgages' could expect older visitors. If you anticipate older visitors consider having a 'text-sizing' button that enables viewers to increase the size of the HTML website text by simply clicking a navigation button.

III. Define the website moving parts

If you are going to hire a web design company to build your website then it is important that you define the deliverables.

This way you can be sure that at the end of the project you are getting exactly what you paid for. Assume nothing. Take the time to define and spell everything out.

Again, I am defining a sample navigation for the fictitious website PoliticalFauxPas.com

Start by defining the navigation.

Home About Us Political Gaffes by Date Political Gaffes by Name Subscribe to Us Contact Us Join Our Forum Search a Gaffe Subscribe to Our Site

After you define the navigation, provide details for each of your website pages from both the 'user-visitors perspective' and what you will control as the website owner or administrator.

Home - The homepage will have our logo banner and some moving collage or political figures. We will supply the photos from a royalty free stock house such as stockphoto.com unless you suggest otherwise. There should be some prominent display for the buttons 'Join' and 'Subscribe'.

There needs to be an area where we will also display 'Gaffe of the Week'. As the website administrator I need to be able to easily update this section on the home page.

Also, we need for you to incorporate Face Book, Google Plus and Twitter buttons.

About Us - The will be general static text for our website. I will send this as a Word document.

Political Gaffes by Date - The website will display sub-headings for months with a list of descending gaffes by date and a hyperlink to the full article. Users will click these to read the entire post.

For example: December 2011 12/23 - Congressman Smith's press conference... 12/19 - Delegate Conner's morning show interview...

As administrator I should have the ability to archive any month. Signed-up users will have the ability to comment on the posts or articles. Signed up users will have the ability to upload their own articles or videos.

Continue to define the functions or your website pages front to back and fine tune things along the way as if you were describing to someone how Face Book works for the first time.

Other questions you should ask yourself include: Will you charge users to join or access special information online? Will you charge other webmasters and website owners for advertising on your website? Will you manage these payments online or handle them manually?

IV. School yourself about web design cost and pricing

The best way to learn about the good, the bad, the ugly and the ridiculous prices for web design is to email your website plan to multiple companies for quotations, otherwise known as a Website RFP (Request For Proposals) and see what comes back!

How quickly do you get a reply? Are they polite and professional? What does their reply-quote cover or include? Do they provide any references? Does there website only have a contact form or an 800 number. (If yes... run fast in the other direction). Google their name. Google the owner?s name. Check both Yahoo and Bing too. Investigate them as if they were baby-sitting your only child. Make sure there are not tons of complaints made against them.

The manner in which you are treated at the beginning of the web design negotiation and discovery process will reflect how you are treated during and long after your website design project is completed.

I often tell prospective clients to send out RFP's to about 4 to 5 different companies. When you receive responses, our advice is never consider the highest proposal or even the lowest proposal. The middle prices are most likely to reflect what the market will bear for website design and development costs.

Then pick up the phone and interview your web design company choices. In some cases you may want to interview them in person. Go with your gut.

V. Ask lots of questions about web design technologies

Don't get sold a bill of goods for a system that will leave you high and dry if your web development company goes out of business.

You can avoid this from happening by asking a few simple questions below you begin.

a. Ask - If your web company goes out of business will I be able to migrate my website and all associated assets such as databases and scripts to another hosting company or web development company?

b. Ask - Is the software you are using proprietary or custom in any way?

c. Ask - Have you built websites in *other software technologies.

*Keep in mind that one software is no better than another. There is no such thing as 'the best software'. Different web design companies use different frameworks, or 'web development software' where they are most comfortable. Some web design companies prefer one software over another because: that's all they know, it's cost effective for them, that's all they have used, it is a widely used, popular web development, ecommerce software.

To date, some of the most popular web development and ecommerce software systems are: Joomla, Virtue Mart, and Magento. This means far more companies are familiar with and actively building websites in these popular software frameworks versus companies who are using proprietary software or off-the-shelf plug-in software.

Other website software include Dot Net Nuke, Sitefinity, Drupal, Word Press and of course good old reliable HTML.

Now get out there and create the next new E-Bay or Wikipedia.

No one is happier than me once a client out grows our web design firm. We had a client grow so fast they were able to hire an in-house web design and programming staff. It does not happen very often, but it has happened once or twice in the last few years. And, I am proud to say we played a large part in helping them to achieve that success early in the game.

Writing Your Website Plan Making A Successful Website How to Write a Web Design RFP