Planning Your Website

What is the goal of your site?

To gain visibility to your customers doing a search on the internet
To provide potential and current customers information regarding your business and services
To sell items over the internet
To educate your visitors on your industry/services
To provide a 24/7 advertising presence
To provide a single point of contact to your visitors/customers
To keep members/customers current on events/news

What is the look you want for your website?

To match your printed materials?
Very corporate and professional or fun and artistic?
Do you want interactive elements?
Feedback forms, collect information, user interaction – bulletin boards, forums, news
Do you want animation?
Flash elements in the banner or in the site as a whole?
Do you want to provide advertising areas for vendors/clients/associations?

Do a search on the internet as though you were an individual looking for the services your company provides:

Search the most popular search engines:
1. Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, AOL
2. Make note of keywords you use and how you would incorporate them into your own site
3. Search by industry, name, services, region, zip code, etc.
Look at your competitors websites
- Do they look professional?
- If you were a potential client, what would your reaction be based on the first impression gained from their website?
- Do they provide additional non-income related information in their area of expertise?
- Do they offer selling points on their services?
- Based on their site, would you hire them?
- What do you like/not like about their site - in order to incorporate or not on your own

Research associations, clubs, directories that promote or operate within your industry:

Is there a link area where you could potentially add a link to your site? The more sites that are linked TO you, the higher your credibility, visibility and rating on some search engines.
Are there associations that you can become a member of to increase your networking?
Local directories are often a source for potential customers
If you are a member of any association/network, make sure this is indicated on your site. Be sure to link to them, thereby possibly gaining a reciprocal link as well.
Memberships lend to increased credibility within your industry

Analyze your print material – business cards, brochures, flyers, vendor media, etc.:

Do you like your printed materials? Would you want to carry over the same design/look for your website?
For every piece of printed material you have, you should have the corresponding electronic version on your website.
Contact your vendors; ask for a media package for advertising their products/services on your website. This not only benefits you, it benefits them as well with additional free advertising. This also increases your credibility.

Do you have an idea for your Domain name?

The domain name is the address for your site. Ie: www.google.com Google.com is the domain name
You want your domain name to reflect as closely as possible the name of your company, without being extremely long

Website hosting

Before you go out and look for a website host, be sure that you know what you are looking for
You should have a very good idea of the content of your site, the applications you wish to incorporate
- Contact/feedback forms
- Dynamically created news sections to be updated via a webpage
- Forums or bulletin boards to allow discussion on your website
- E-commerce – do you intend to actively sell products from your website?
- Payment – do you wish to be able to accept payments, donations, any monies at all from your site?
- Do you wish to provide advertising?
Depending on each of these factors, you need a host that can handle the technologies you wish to utilize
My requirements for a web host are as follows:
- Cgi, php, asp, asp.net, mySQL, ODBC
- Custom 404 pages
- FTP
- FrontPage extensions
- Webmail and POP ability
- ColdFusion is a plus, but not necessary
Determine if the host provides domain registration and at what cost
Where are the servers physically located?
What kind of guarantee do they have for uptime?
Typically, you should be able to find a host that provides everything you want for between $10-20.00 per month and this should include yearly domain name registration

When you have answered the above questions and have invested some research into what you want or feel you need in your website, then you need to take the following steps to bring your expectations into an understood checklist:

Jot down the main sections for your website, writing each section title on an index card
- Lay the cards out on a table, and think about what possible sub-sections you would want to place under each main section. At the very least:
  - Home page – this will be the entry page to your site
  - About Us – describing your business, mission statement, etc
  - Services – what you do
  - Products/Portfolio – If you sell products, or provide them, include them here
  - Links & Memberships – links to industry related information, directories, associations and any that you are a member of
  - Contact Us – A separate page to indicate your contact information and a contact form for easy communication for your visitors
- For example, lets look at a Dental Practice. You have a section called Services. Under services, you wish to inform your visitors that you handle:
  - Preventative dentistry
  - Orthodontics
  - Cosmetic dentistry
  - Pre-medication
  - Special services
- You do not want to describe each service in detail on the main page, as that would result in much scrolling for your viewer, as well as making specific items difficult to find.
- You would therefore write out 5 more index cards, each titled with the specific services you offer, where those pages would represent the in depth description of what each one is, encompasses and how you perform it.
Set aside samples of each piece of printed material you have to be used to create content for the pages
Set aside a digital or very clean and large copy of your logo to be used to create the custom graphics for your site
If you have media from vendors/associations and/or photos that you wish to have included on your site, set those aside as well
Compose the text that will be used to flesh out each page on your site
Write down any ideas you have for the layout or design elements you wish to see on your site
Make note of competitor sites that you like, print or save links to each to show your designer examples of what you do and do not like
Make a list of sites/directories that you would like to link to you
Make a list of keywords that you think your visitors would use to search for a service that your company provides
Browse through some samples to see what styles interest you

What Now?

Provide all of the above information to your designer and be open and up-front about the level of involvement you want in the project.

With Merlee Designs, you can participate as little or as much as you desire. I will be honest and open with you regarding standard design principles, and about things that you may want, but that may be detrimental to the success of your site.

Be sure that what you want on your site is going to be beneficial to your company and/or your visitors. Don’t fall prey to wanting something just because it strikes you as “cool” or trendy. Visitors want to visit a site that is clean, easy to navigate, quick to load, and wholly understandable.

You are now ready to define yourself on the internet, to have a 24/7 presence to represent you or your company to unimaginable numbers of potential customers and visitors.

Merlee Bos
Merlee Designs™
Your website IS your first impression™ ...
http://www.merleedesigns.com

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Your website IS your first impression...

Merlee Designs