Planning Your Website – Before You Contact a Web Designer
Do you need a website, but don’t know where to start? The very first thing you need to do is sit down and come up with a basic site plan. Deciding on the type of project and it’s initial specifications will help you pick and start a working relationship with a suitable designer.
Here are some basic tips to get you started:
- Figure out what you want your site to accomplish for you: This is the most important thing you need to do before you even think about anything else. In order to increase the chances of having a successful website, you need to clarify your goals.Would you like your website to increase sales, provide information about your products and services, attract advertisers, etc.? Once you have a general goals sorted out, narrowing down more specific goals may provide even more insight. Some specific goals may be:
- I want to increase my overall sales by 30%.
- I want to attract 2 new clients per month through my website.
- I want to get at least 40 new people to sign up for my newsletter per month.
- I want to build my site traffic to at least 10,000 visits per month.
- Write down your site pages: Make a list of the pages you will need on your site. Some usual pages for a business site are About Us, Contact Us, Services, etc. If your site is larger, you may find it necessary to do an outline of your site and divide it up into sections. If your site is so large and complex that this isn’t possible, you may want to think about hiring an information architect to help organize this information for you in a logical way.
Decide on site features: Write down a list of features your site should have. Some typical features might be a blog, a forum, an e-commerce shop, photo galleries, community features with visitor registration, etc. These things will help determine the type of site you may need. Here are some common types of web sites:
- Blog: This might be a site with just a few static informational pages and a blog. Wordpress is a good solution for this type of site.
- Informational Brochure Site: Brochure sites may have a series of pages about your company, your services and solutions, photo galleries, your events or other features. The best bet with this type of site is to find a Content Management System (CMS) that suits you. ExpressionEngine and Drupal are both very good solutions for building custom sites out of many. For this, you will most likely need to get recommendations from an experienced web designer to help figure out what CMS will suit your needs best.
- Shop: If you are planning on selling products, an e-commerce shop solution would most likely be an option for you. Some open source software solutions for this type of site include Magento and Zen Cart. Shopify is a popular hosted solution.
- Community Site: This site might have community features like visitor registration, forums, profiles, etc. What software solution you go with on this depends on the type of features you need. You may find a solution that fits your needs out of the box, but it’s also likely you will need help finding the best solution for your needs from an expert for this type of site as well.
- Have information about your company ready: Have your mission statement and basic information about your company ready to provide potential web designers. This will help them determine what kind of industry you are in and if they are able to help with your project.
- Compose a brief description of your future website: Write a brief sentence or two about your website. Some things to include may be the general purpose and it’s target audience. For example, “My site will give information to stressed out and busy 30-something working professionals on how to utilize my common sense organization methods to free up time in their day to day lives.”
- Compile a list of sites you like: Make a list of other websites you like and what you like about each. This will help both give the designer a reference and help you solidify the goals for yourself. These can be sites in your industry or just sites you like the features of.
- Determine Your Budget: Having a general idea of the budget you are willing to set for your website will go a long way in determining what type of site is best for you and the best solution that will fit within your budget. A lot of people don’t feel comfortable presenting their budget to designers because they think the designer may automatically present a quote based upon that budget. But presenting a budget beforehand is important. It can save a lot of time on both sides in case you and the designer are not a fit for each other if your budget is smaller or larger than what the designer can handle.If you still feel unsure about sharing your budget, your best bet is getting a good referral from a trusted friend or approaching a designer that you know is reputable. That way you can trust the designer to give you an honest quote or at least let you know if your budget is within a realistic range for the type of website you need.
Once you have this information prepared, you will then be ready to contact designers and send them your Request for Proposal (RFP) document. If your website is so complex that this post doesn’t cover your basic needs or revolutionary that there are no sites or references to compare it to, you may want to consider hiring a web designer that does consultation and scheduling a few hours to go over your plans with them by phone or in person.
In the next post I’ll go over how to organize and present your RFP document.
Other articles in the planning your website series:
Part 1 - Before You Contact a Web Designer
Part 2 – Preparing Your RFP Document
Part 3 – Finding Potential Web Designers
Part 4 – What to look for in a Web Designer
Part 5 – Questions to ask your potential web designer
Some related resources you may also find helpful:
Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer
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