Before you proceed with your web building venture, you must at least know what your site or web page is going to be about and what you’re trying to achieve with it. Just like you can’t build a house without a blueprint, you CANNOT build a web site without a plan. Trust me, planning can save you from many unnecessary headaches in the future.
Website research and planning is an essential step towards a successful site. You should spend considerable time with this. Get this right and you’re on your way to a flourishing content site. Get this wrong and no matter how good your site is, you could end up nowhere.
I won’t dwell too much on this section. But I want to just stress that this is a very important step. If you want to learn more about this, check out the Day 2 of the SBI Action Guide. It’s mainly for SBI owners but the information in there can be used even if you don’t own SBI.
Okay, now on with today’s lesson.
- Your objectives
The first step in your plan is to set your objectives. What is the purpose of your web site? What are you trying to achieve? It may seem quite straightforward but depending on what you want to achieve, your design and the tools you use can differ quite a bit.
- Your target market
You need to figure out who you’re trying to reach. What is your chosen niche? Your niche can be anything your heart desires but for your site to be a success from the start, you have to choose the right niche. How do you determine what a right niche is? To begin with, there should be a demand for it. If you choose an area that no one else is interested in, you’ll find it harder to profit from it. Secondly, not only should there be a demand for it but your target market should, preferably, be passionate about it. Thirdly, your target market should also have some spending power. You can still profit if they don’t but you’ll make more if they did.
- Your competition
When choosing a niche, it’s good to start with a niche with lots of competitors. Yes, that’s right. An area with lots of competitors mean that demand is high. What you should do then, is to narrow down the niche and focus on a section whose needs are not being met.
With respect to web building, your competitors can be of great help. Yup! They will tell you exactly what to include in your web site, so to speak. I, for one, would never refuse a helping hand. So, go on. Visit your competitors’ web sites. See what they have in their web sites. Ideas are bound to pop up in your head. Have a basic idea of what type of web sites others, in your market, have. But stay away from copying straight out of other people’s web sites. You could get into unnecessary trouble.
- Your sitemap
It would be handy to know, what sort of content you’re planning to add to your web site. Whether or not they will be on separate web pages. If so, how many web pages? And what these pages are. And how they link to each other. And whether or not you’ll be grouping them into categories. A site map is a visual representation of your web site. When you have your web pages in the form of a map, it becomes easier to see the whole picture. Having a picture of your whole web site will also make it easier to create a navigation system that is useful to your visitors. Depending on your product, you may have different web pages for your site. Here are the more common pages you may want to think about:
- About Us
- Features
- Benefits
- Testimonials
- Products and services
- Order
- Ezine
- Affiliates
- Links
- FAQ
- Sitemap
- Forum
- Individual articles
- Contact Us
You don’t have to include all of these pages. Just pick those that suit you most.
- List existing material
Before you go around collecting or creating material for your web site, make a note of what you already have. If you already have most of your material, you can save a lot of time. Your existing material could be anything: your business logo, a color scheme, web images, images of your products, articles that you’ve written.
That’s all I’m going to cover in this section. Remember, for a more in depth guide on web site research and planning, check out the Day 2 of the SBI Action Guide.
