Planning a Web Site

Have you ever wondered why some web sites look like the marvels
of creativity and some look like specifically created to confound
visitors? Ideally, no individuals make a web site to
inconvenience their visitor but end up doing so because no
serious thought is put into the planning face.

Your web site on the Net is your virtual office - it represents
you on the Information Superhighway, where the traffic moves at a
lightening speed, and within a couple of seconds a particular web
site has to catch the fancy of the surfer. And since there are
thousands of choices for a surfer, he/she just has to click the
mouse button to move to the next web site.

Frankly, I would never like to address the casual future web
master. I assume if you are reading this article, you mean
business, you mean to do business from your web site. It's like
your real-world office. Wouldn't you spend time on planning and
designing of your brick and mortar office? People even hire
outside interior designers to come up with a quality office.

Same applies to your virtual office. People are going to come, if
they like the surrounding, they'll linger on, and if they
appreciate what you are trying to convey, they would preferably
like to do business with you. If you plan to do business, your
virtual office is as important as your real-world office, more if
you want to attract the international clientele.

You cannot design a web site in an atmosphere of isolation, or as
a le Castaway. Talk to people around you, talk to your friends,
ask them what's their experience on the Net, what sort of designs
they like or dislike.

So what are the factors you should take into consideration while
laying out your plan?

Start from the end result.

1. What do you want out of your web site?
2. What type of visitors do you have in mind?
3. Is your web site going to be theme based?
4. What should be their action and reaction once they arrive at
your site?
5. What's going to be the background of your target visitor?
6. What hardware are they going to use while accessing your web
site?
7. By the end of 4 months, what should you have achieved?
8. What's your technical expertise, and do you have time to learn
something new?

Two things are of primal importance - content, and how easy it is
to reach that content. If you want people to buy from your site,
don't play with them the "Treasure Hunt" game. Everything should
be there within the reach of a single click. If you want your
visitor to access a particular section, the link to that section
should be visible as soon as the first page, or for that matter,
any page of your web site comes up.

You should know what sort of people are going to visit your site;
who are your target, and what are their behavioral patterns. If
you can manage, design your site according to the minimum
software/hardware profile so that most people can access your
site.

Having a long-term plan pays well. Especially if getting into
Yahoo! is a bog thing for you. The Yahoo! Guys don't include a
site again and again. Some people design same pages differently
for different search engines, but as a beginner, it'll only
create obfuscation. Just create an elementary, user-friendly,
easily navigable site, put in lots meaningful content, and submit
it manually to the main search engines. You can get a list of
submission links at
http://www.bytesworth.com/submit_urls.asp. Some of the links
might have changed, but they were working when I was updating the
page.

For a comprehensive list of guidelines on how you should be
designing a web site for maximum usability, pay a visit to
http://www.w3c.org.