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Creating
an effective online presence requires extensive planning for your
new or re-designed website. Use our worksheet if you are authoring
your own site, or are planning to hiring a professional web
designer.
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Planning your site
...
- Overview
- Design and Development
- Hosting
- Building the Site
- Maintenance and updating
- Cost
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Notes:
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Overview
...
What is the purpose of the site?
Decide in order of importance which of the following
you wish to do - a good
site will be clear in its purpose.
- Serve the needs of existing clients
- Explain your products and services
- Bring in new clients to your business
- Take online orders
- Provide information for your staff
- Other
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Notes:
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Who do you want to visit your site?
- Who is your primary audience?
- Who might be looking for your site/services/products?
- Who might be interested if they reach
your site accidentally?
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Notes:
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What will you offer on your site?
- Company Information
- Details of your services
- Product Listings
- Online ordering
- Online support for existing customers
- Discussion/Community boards
- Applications chat/interactive support
- Resources/Recommended Sites
- Other
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Will
you want specific programs or components?
- eGreetings (ecards)
- Shopping Cart
- Reminder Service
- Message Board
- Guest Book
- Secure Online Ordering
- Merchant Account
- Banner Rotation for Advertisers
- Site Statistics
- Other
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What
information will need to accompany the products that will be sold
on your site?
- Shipping and Tax information
- Delivery Methods
- Product Photos
- Product Descriptions
- Product Pricing
- Product variables such as: color, size, etc
- Shopping Cart Software
- Categories/Departments
- Customer Service information
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How do you plan to bring visitors back to your site?
- What about your site will bring them back?
- What fresh content/regular news are you likely to have?
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What
are your marketing plans to bring visitors to your site?
- Submissions to: Search Engines, Directories, Industry-Specific Directories
- Reciprocal Linking with Others
- Link exchange/banner ads
- Paid banner ads
- Paid preferential search engine listings
- Internet Press Releases
- Marketing in Newsgroups/via Email
- Business cards, Letterheads etc
- Offline media advertising
- Mail shots, Flyers
- Information at your place of business
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How would you define success for this
site?
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Design and Development ...
What will you call the site?
- Do you have an existing domain name?
- Is your business name available as a domain name?
- If not are you able to come up with a good alternative?
- Are you planning on a .com, .net, .org or .ie name? Or another suffix or
number of those?
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What will your visitors look for?
What keywords or phrases do you think clients, and potential clients, might
use to find your site?
(List as many as you can think of)
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How do you want your site to look?
- Do you have a preference for colors?
- Do you have existing artwork? ie: logos, photos, items used in brochures
etc
- Will you need new graphics created? What type?
- List 3 or 4 sites you like and state why you like them
- List 3 or 4 sites you do not like and state what you dislike about them
- Rate the sites of 3 businesses similar to yours - stating clearly what you
like and dislike about them.
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What sort of text content are you planning?
Will you need mainly short pages or do you have a large body of
text based information?
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Will you need a form or forms?
- Contact form
- Extensive forms on many subjects
- Forms which are used to transmit secure information
- Suggestion and /or Feedback form
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| Site Hosting
...
How are you planning to host your site?
- Have you compared hosting plans?
- Will you pay monthly or annually?
- Hosting by the same ISP where you have a dial-up connection
- Hosting by a specialist hosting company
- Don't know yet
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Do you need several/many different e-mail addresses?
Determine how many you will need.
ie: customerservice@yoursite.com, info@yoursite.com
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Building the Site...
Will the site be developed in house?
- Do you have access to a person with the necessary expertise?
- What amount of training and/or time away from others duties would this
person
(or these people) require initially?
- What is the cost of this time/training?
- If this person runs into difficulties is their someone you can call on for
assistance?
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Will the site be out sourced to a web
designer?
- Have you chosen a designer?
- Does the designers previous work impress you?
- Have you contacted them for a Proposal of
Services?
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Who will be responsible for gathering information and getting
it to the designer?
- Form a team together specifically for this purpose
- Appoint one individual to be the contact
person between the team and the designer
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Who will review ongoing progress on the site as it is
developed and have the authority to approve it?
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Who will sign off on the completed project?
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Maintenance and Updating...
How often will the site need to be updated?
- Will some sections need more regular updating?
- Do you want to add syndicated content which automatically updates?
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How do you plan to update content?
- Do you need forms/templates to allow individual sections to be
maintained/updated?
- Do you need a backend for easy updating with little technical knowledge?
- Are you planning to update the site using proprietary software - such as
FrontPage?
- Will training be required in the use of this software?
- Will updating be done in house or via a maintenance
contract with your web designer?
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What about background maintenance tasks?
- Regular checking of internal and external links
- Search Engine status and resubmissions
- Checking the competition?
- Overseeing content sourcing, editing and approval
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Initial Costs
- Design and Development
- Domain registration
- Hosting set up
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On Going Costs
- Maintenance and updating
- Hosting
- Additional development costs if adding to site
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Notes:
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