View source

<seo title="What is needed for a web site" metakeywords="web design,web dewelopment,create a web site,new site,design web site" metadescription="10 questions to ask yourself before designing a new site" /><div align=justify>Quite often websites are designed without a prior clear plan for online business. This leads to business failure. Every single site needs careful planning. To prevent possible mistakes, check the list of questions below and answer them prior to designing your site.

'''''1. What are your business goals?''''

Simple answer like 'I want to make money' won't do. Think of a deeper motivation that you have e.g. “I want to have the financial freedom and spend more time with my family and friends.”

'''''2. What’s the purpose of your website?'''''

This questions is asked by almost every visitor accessing your website. Your website home page must provide clear explanation of the purpose and benefits of the products and/or services you are offering.

'''''3. What type of products or services will you offer?'''''

Check the level of competition in the area you are going to make business at by doing keyword research. There are a lot of tools for that and you can use the free Google Keyword Tool to find out the possible number of searches your main keywords may receive every month.

If it is a very competitive market, it may be rather difficult for you to stand out from your competitors and have a successful online business. If there are no searches, then this means that there is no demand fro that kind of service/product and it is not worth marketing.

'''''4. How many products will you sell?'''''

This is necessary to determine the number of pages your website will have. In case you’re going to sell only one product or service, you may only need 4 web pages e.g. Home, Product (or Services), About, Contact. If you’re selling 100s of items, you should have a database driven site to store and manage all of them.

'''''5. How many variables does your product have?'''''

There are many possible variables your product may have: size, color, type, shipping, etc. Make sure your shopping cart allows you to include all of them.

'''''6. In what way will you accept online payments?'''''

To accept credit card payments online (each time people buy a product from your site), things such as a shopping cart, merchant account, payment gateway and SSL certificate will be needed for secure transactions. Another option for accepting payments online is the Paypal shopping cart. 

'''''7. Have you signed up for a web hosting plan?'''''

For your website to be available for every person online, it has to be hosted on a web server. Select a hosting plan that will cover the bandwidth needed to receive 1000s of visitors monthly. Also make sure you'll be able to upgrade your plan in case you need more space and bandwidth.

'''''8. How will you maintain your site?'''''

This will help you to determine what software you (or your designer) will use to build the website. If it's going to have just a few web pages which don’t need regular updating, then the software such as Dreamweaver can be used. 

If your website consists of 100s of pages, you should consider a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla or Zen Cart. In this case all your data will be properly organized within a database. 

'''''9. Do you have a marketing plan?'''''

Prior to starting your online business, you must create a plan to promote it. There is a great number of ways to do this on the net. Make sure website promotion is done frequently and consistently. Then it will be really effective.

'''''10. How will you monitor your website statistics?'''''

Check whether site statistics (e.g. AW Stats) is included into your hosting plan. If not, you should create a Google Analytics account and insert the code into your web pages. It will track the number of visitors, where they are coming from and what keywords are used to find your site in the search engines.

Answering these questions before designing a site will help you to prevent failures, increase your online business success and stand out from your competitors.
</div>
Return to 10 questions to ask yourself before designing a new site.
Retrieved from "http://myidealhost.com/tutorials/10_questions_to_ask_yourself_before_designing_a_new_site"
Navigation

Search
