Ten questions to ask before designing
your web site

1. Who is your audience?

This is perhaps the most fundamental question to ask. Contrary to popular belief, your web site isn’t about you or your products or services. Your web site is all about your audience. Why are they visiting the site? What problems do people have for which your web site is the solution?

2. What do you want people to do as a result of visiting your web site?

Regardless of your political persuasion, it’s hard to deny the fact that President Obama and his team ran a stellar on-line election campaign. Everything they did involved driving people to action. Whether they were asking people to knock on a neighbor’s door, have a fund-raising party, or attend a rally, all their web activity was focused on getting people to do something. This question lets your web designer know what’s important. If you ultimately want a visitor to buy a book or invite you to speak at their next event, then don’t bury this information way down in your site — make it prominent and easy to activate.

3. What kind of technology will your audience be using?

A web site can look very different depending on the type of browser a person is using and a good web designer will strive to make your site ‘bullet-proof’ so that it works across all major browser platforms and user preferences. However, it’s useful to have a discussion about technological requirements so that the site can be designed to appeal to your main user group. What’s the most commonly used browser for your audience? Do they have a super-fast internet connection? Will there be restrictions imposed on what they can view? Will people need to access your site via their mobile phones or PDA’s?

4. What brand values need to be reflected in the site?

In addition to your logo, company colors and other branding assets — what are the core-values of your business that you want to communicate? Are you modern, local, trendy, fun, caring, trustworthy, small, large, academic, corporate, luxurious, exclusive? Find a word that best describes the experience you want to provide.

5. What kind of content will be included on the site?

How much content do you already have for your web site? If you are giving your current web site a makeover, what content will you RE-USE, what will you REFRESH, and what will you RETIRE? How much content has to be created entirely from scratch? Will there be different people generating content? What kind of system needs to be put in place for managing content and keeping it current?

6. Will the site be search engine friendly?

It is said that the best target audience is the one that’s looking for you. A search engine will find your site if it is built in the right way. Your content, links, tags, file names, etc, all have a direct effect on whether you are on page one of a Google search result or hidden somewhere in the ether.

Your designer will probably ask you about your ‘Electronic Footprint’. What kind of web presence do you already have? How does this compare to your competitors? What kind of presence do you want to have? Do you have a high search engine ranking not just for people that know what to look for, but for potential new clients that are using keywords and phrases to search?

If you are going to put energy into creating a new site — make sure people see it.

7. How is the site going to be hosted?

Domain name registration and hosting should also be discussed early. Will you want to register a new name for your site? What kind of traffic volume is your site likely to attract? Is it important to you that your hosting company is reliable and available if you have any problems? Do you want to be able to get good statistics for your site? You may want to bundle in email and other services into your hosting package.

8. Who’s going to handle the ongoing updates and maintenance of your site?

What will happen once your site launches? Will you need ongoing support and maintenance or just a refresh from time to time? Don’t just launch your site and leave it to fester. Web sites can evolve over time via continuous additions, modifications and improvements.

9. What’s the timescale for the project?

When would you like to launch your web site? Is there something in particular that you would like the site to be ready for? If you have a tight deadline, can you set some priorities? What can you do quickly to get the site up and running, and what can be added on over time?

10. What’s the budget range?

The questions above will give you and your designer a sense of how much work is going to be involved in building your site, but the budget really determines what gets done and how. Are you imagining that the cost of your site is going to be in the $5K range, the $50,000K range or do you have a wealthy investor who is going to bankroll you to become the next big dotcom? If you set some parameters, then a realistic proposal and project scope can be determined.