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Design - Plan -
Create - Check -
Submit - Position -
Promote
Planning
The key to any successful project is planning. Even if you
eventually hire a web site designer to create your site, you should
still make at least an attempt to do some or most of the initial
planning yourself. Here are a few key points to consider when planning
your web site:
- Take your time. A good web site takes days, weeks or even
months to plan. Bad sites can be planned in considerably less time!
- Content is king. Customers don't turn on their television
sets or listen to their radios just to hear the commercials. Your
web site should be at least 80% information and 20% sales.
Concentrate on how to draw potential customers to your site and keep
them there. Make a list of free things you can offer your customers.
- Role reversal. The best way to start the design process
is to think of your business from your customer's point of view.
Create a list of key words and short phrases that people would use
to describe your business. This list will become very important in
other design steps.
- Take a site seeing trip. Use the list you just created to
search for yourself using several Internet search engines. Of course
you won't find your site, but you will probably find some of your
competitors.
- The good, the bad, and the ugly. Make another list for
the web sites that you find that impress you, and also the ones that
turn you off. Pay close attention to the sites that appear on the
first page returned by each search engine.
- Expand your lists. As you surf the web, keep your lists
near by. Look for other keywords for your search list. Look for the
businesses that present themselves in a professional manner, and
always keep in mind the free information you can offer your
customers.
- Organize Your Ideas. Your web site should not be just one
long run-on page. Arrange your ideas into logical groups for each
page.
- Take the day off. After a few hours you are probably
hopelessly locked into a single focused thought pattern. Get away
for a while. Start again tomorrow with a fresh perspective and an
open mind. Keep repeating steps 1 through 7 until you are happy with
your ideas. This step is one of the primary reasons it takes so long
to develop a good web site. If you don't want a good site, just skip
this step and move on to the next section.
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