Where Do I Begin When Creating a Web Site?

To someone who may have never play a part in designing and building a web site, the tasks involved may be overwhelming and quite foreign. To make this proceed a bit easier to grasp, the following set of points have been compiled to "block" the creative process into smaller, digestible pieces.

This page is designed to get "the creative juices flowing" and to lay the foundations for what can be a web site that fills both your and your customers' needs.

To make the most of this initial creative effort, you will have to play the role of both the customer and the vendor, so get your "imagination cap" ready and dive head first in the follow questions...

Use the following printable version to record your thoughts:

Web site Planning Worksheet ( doc - 53kb / pdf )

1. Purpose

Give the most important purpose a "1", next most important a "2". Leave those blank which do not interest you at all.
I would like to have a web site…
__ To gain a favorable impression of the company or organization.
__ To develop a qualified list of prospects
__ To sell products directly taking credit card information over the Internet
__ To encourage potential customers to contact us by phone or mail to consummate a sale.
__ To make available product information and price lists to distributors.
__ To make available product information and price lists to customers.
__ To strengthen brand identification.

I would also like to my site…
__  To serve as a information center for my employees.

__ Other reason(s)____________________________________________________

2. Overall Impression of Web Site

What kind of impression of your business or activity would you like the viewer of your web site to receive while viewing your site?

3. Site Organization

Using the back of this sheet, please list the topics that you require to be covered in this web site. If you wish, you can draw a diagram of the organization of these topics, i.e. which ones could be grouped under one heading, which one might refer back to another, etc. Please include a title for each page.

Total number of pages ________

4. Site and Domain Names

Site Name on Header Graphic: ____________________________________

The domain name must be registered through a web hosting service and approved by a domain registration service before you can use it. You may check the availability of your domain name at Network Solutions ( http://www.networksolutions.com )

Domain name www.____________________________
   
___Need to Register
___Already Registered

5. Header Graphic

It is very helpful if you will include a copy of your company's letterhead, brochures, catalog, etc. so we can see how you present your company image.

__ Would you like your company logo incorporated in the header graphic? Do you have a color copy?
__ Do you have a photo or drawing of logo?

__ Would you like for Box Five Designs to design a logo for this web site?

__ Do you have a font preference?
__ What colors should be incorporated in the logo?

__ Other ideas:_______________________________________________________

6. Color and Accents

For the most part, we recommend a white (or close) background for best readability and contrast. As for the rest of the pages, organization colors or other desired colors can be incorporated (within good design reason).
What are your color preferences?

7. Navigation System

The navigation system of all standard web site packages includes one or more of the following:

• Text links from the front page and sectional pages to every page in the system to enable Web search engines to "spider" and index content on every page.  
• Graphic images – navigation buttons with or without rollover effects.
• Graphic images – image maps with a brief word or two indicating each page -- or, in larger sites -- each section of the web site. This appears at the bottom of every page. In some sites we put this both top and bottom. You are limited to a maximum of about eight (8) selections (due to size) on this image map. We use server side image maps to make it easy to expand the site at a later time without having to change the coding on each page of the site. For this reason, and to keep costs down, we do not include separate "buttons" on our standard sites. Included in sites of 6 pages or more.
• Drop-down menus with text links are especially useful on larger sites. Included in sites of 12 pages or more. They can allow more detail than an 8-item bottom image map, and can enable visitors to see from any page how to get to any other. These may be arranged along the top of each page or along side the left or right side of the page.

8. Basic Page Elements

These are the important items which should appear on nearly every web page on your site (except the "home" page).

• Page titles which show at top of Web browser only
• Top-of-page graphic based on the design of the masthead graphic
• Page title in larger type. Heading Font Style: ________________
• Body Text. What font style would you prefer?: ___________________ 
• Standard company name and address at bottom or side of page
• E-mail response link to the following e-mail address: _________________________
• Copyright and trademark information in small print at the bottom of every page. What registered trademarks, trademarks, and service marks does your company want to indicate here?

9. Photos, Graphics, Animations, Sound, and Video

For us to use photos, video or sound files on your web site, you must own the copyright to, or have permission from the copyright owner to use any photos or graphics you send us.

• Clip art tends to look a bit tacky on web sites. We recommend photos.
• Photos you supply either by sending the photos themselves for us to scan and return, or by sending the digitized images on a diskette or compact disk.
• Stock photos can obtained from various sources online. If you would like us to search for specific photos for you, please give us general descriptions of desired photos.

If you really want your web site to "pop" , we can equip your web pages with:

• Sound, either MIDI musical background or streaming Real Audio for music or voice. You can provide sound files or we can search or purchase sound files for you.
• Animated GIF images. We can make or search for animations for an extra charge.
• Shockwave or Flash Animations
• Video clips. You can provide sound files or we can search or purchase sound files for you.

10. Response Forms

What is the purpose of your response form?
__ Guestbook for visitors to record comments
__ Request for information
__ Survey of customer preferences
__ Other: ________________________________

These forms normally send an email to a pre-determined e-mail address. With what email address would you like to receive these responses? ____________________________

Note: We do not set up sites that use the response form as an order form, since these require secure servers, and secure order pick-up. For any e-commerce applications, we can recommend suitable pre-packaged ordering software with a secure server.  

11. Web Hosting Service

Fortunately/unfortunately, we are not in the web hosting business. We recommend to our clients web hosting services tailored to their specific needs. We have several requirements that we need met to support the technologies that we use. Please let us recommend a Web host service for you so that we can ensure that everyones needs are met by the web hosts.

___ We have a preferred web hosting service
Name: _____________________________________
Web Site: ___________________________
Phone: _____________________________
E-mail for support or help ______________________________

___ Please recommend a web hosting service for us. (Information and rates for web hosting will be relayed to you before purchase of service is conducted.)

12. Registering and Advertising Your Web site

There are hundreds of ways to advertise your web site. Consider:

• Advertising your web site to Web search engines that index the Web
• Giving customers a good reason to come by offering them something for visiting
• Finding industry-wide linking pages and negotiating reciprocal links to and from their web pages.
• Purchasing web advertising
• Becoming active in several of the thousands of Internet news groups and mailing lists
• Developing a "signature" mini-ad attached to all your e-mail messages
• Making your web site part of one or more of the many "malls."
• Including your e-mail and Web addresses on all your company's print literature, stationery, and display advertising
• E-mail newsletters

We would be glad to work out a marketing strategy to help you get the most out of your new web site.

Information about number of visitors to your web site can usually be obtained from your Internet Service Provider, from statistics generated daily by such programs as WWWSTAT, GETSTATS, or Analog on the host computer. We do not include page counters on our standard webs.

We will submit your information to Web search engines to "register" your web site. Before doing this we work with you to get 50 to 100 keywords and a carefully constructed 25-word sentence contain the most important keywords.

13. Maintenance

Package prices include minor updating over the first 2 months of the contract. This covers minor information changes, small price changes, etc. These updates do not include major changes, such as new custom graphics or constructing a new web page. Major updates require a new design maintenance contract, which is billed at our hourly rate.

After this 2 month period, you may choose to maintain the site yourself, or you might decided to contract us to maintain the site, under your direction.

__ We choose to maintain the site ourself after the 2 month free maintenance period.
__ We would for Box Five Designs to maintain our web site.

14. Shameless Plug

May we include a link at the bottom of the welcome page which reads "Web Site Designed by Box Five Designs "? (You are under no obligation to say yes.)

___ Yes, Please include your company tag on the site.
___ No, we prefer that you omit your company tag from the site.

Congratulations ! You are well on your way to creating a professionally-designed web site that will achieve your web-based business goals.

We are looking forward to receiving your materials and constructing your web site!