Pre-Planning Your Website
Pre-planning how you want to put your website together is extremely important. Pre-planning gives you an idea ahead of time of what is needed on your website and how you want the website to look.
Think of it like planning to build a house. When building a house the first thing to do is to draw up detailed plans. These plans tell the contractor where the bathrooms go, how to lay out the kitchen, and where to put the front door. Building a website works pretty much the same way. The biggest difference is that making changes to a website is a heck of a lot cheaper, and easier than it is building a house.
When planning your website think about what you want and need. What do you want your site to do? How do you want it to look? To help answer these questions, print out Pre-Planning Questionnaire. Answer the questions to the best you can. These questions are designed to help you think through your website and how you want it to look.
Pre-Planning Questionnaire |
The printed out questionnaire should look something like this:
- What is the name of your website?
- What type of website is this? (i.e. business, personal, hobby)
- What is the nature of your website?
- What type of look are you trying to achieve? (i.e. high tech, natural, clean)
- What color scheme do you want for your website?
- Who is your target audience? Who are you hoping to reach?
- Do you have an existing website? If so, what is the URL (the website address)?
- Do you have a logo (Business)? If so, is it in a digital format?
- Do you have a tagline or slogan (Business)?
- What do your competitors sites look like (Business)?
- List three (3) of your most favorite websites and what you like about them.
- List three (3) of your least favorite websites and what you don't like about them.
- What are your long term goals for this website?
- Do you plan on selling anything on your website? If so, do you have a way to accept credit cards? How are you going to handle shipping?
- Do you currently have policies in place to address this?
- When do you want to have your website up and running?
Next we'll go over how you want your website to be laid out.
