Website Planning Worksheet   [Printable Version]

This is a very detailed worksheet.
It asks a number of questions which you will need to answer before you can get your website project off the ground.

Overview:

What is the purpose of the site?
Decide in order of importance which of the following you wish to do - a good site will be clear in its purpose so not too many should be chosen.

• Serve the needs of existing clients.
• Explain your products and services.
• Bring in new clients to your business.
• Take online orders
• Provide information for your staff.
• Other.

Who do you want to visit your site?

• Who is the primary audience you site is aimed at?
• Who might be looking for your site/services/products?
• Who might be interested if they reach your site accidentally?

What will you offer on your site?

• Company Information.
• Details of your services.
• Product Listings.
• Online ordering.
• Online support for existing customers.
• Discussion/bulletin boards.
• Applications chat/interactive support.
• Extensive Links.
  

How do you plan to bring visitors back to your site?

• What will be useful enough to lure them back?
• What fresh content/regular news are you likely to have?

How do you plan to market the site to bring in visitors in the first place?

• Submissions to: Search Engines, Directories, Industry-Specific Directories.
• Reciprocal linking with Others.
• Link exchange/banner ads.
• Paid banner ads.
• Paid preferential search engine listings.
• Internet Press Releases.
• Business cards, letterheads etc.
• Offline media advertising.
• Mail shots, flyers.
• Information at your place of business.

How would you define success for this site?

Design and Development:

What will you call the site?

• Do you have an existing domain name?
• Is your business name available as a domain name?
• If not are you able to come up with a good alternative?
• Are you planning on a .com, .net, .org or .ie name? Or another suffix or number of those?

What will your visitors look for?

What keywords or phrases do you think clients, and potential clients, might use to find your site? (List as many as you can think of.)

How do you want your site to look?

• Do you have a preference for colours?
• Do you have existing artwork? eg logos, photos, items used in brochures etc.
• Will you need new graphics created? What sort?
• List 3 or 4 sites you like and say why you like them.
• List 3 or 4 sites you do not like and say what you dislike about them.
• Rate the sites of 3 businesses similar to yours - stating clearly what you like and dislike about them.

What sort of text content are you planning?

Will you need mainly short pages or do you have a large body of text based information to impart?

Will you need audio?

Will you need video?

Will you need a form or forms?

• Just a contact form.
• Extensive forms on many subjects.
• Specialised forms such as assessment/application forms.
• Forms which are used to transmit secure information.
• E-mail Auto responders.
  

How are you planning to host your site?

• Hosted on another site? (www.othersite.com/yoursite.)
• Purchasing a Domain Name? (www.yoursite.com)
• Hosting by the same ISP where you have a dial-up connection.
• Hosting by a specialist hosting company.
• Don't know yet.

Do you need several/many different e-mail addresses?

Will the site be developed in house?

• Is there already someone in house with the necessary expertise?
• What amount of training and/or time away from others duties would this person (or these people) require initially?
• What is the cost of this time/training?
• If this person runs into difficulties is their someone you can call on for assistance?

Will the site be out sourced to a web developer?

• Have you chosen a developer?
• Does the developers previous work impress you?
• Have you contacted previous customers of the developer to see how satisfied they were with the overall service they received?

Who will be responsible for gathering information and getting it to the developer?

• Consider getting a team together specifically for this purpose.
• Appoint ONE person to liaise between the team and the developer.

Who will review ongoing progress on the site as it is developed and have the authority to approve it?

Who will sign off on the completed project?

Maintenance and Updating:

How often will the site need to be updated?

• Will some sections need more regular updating?
• Do you want to add syndicated content which automatically updates?

How do you plan to update content?

• Do you need forms/templates to allow individual sections to be maintained/updated?
• Do you need a backend for easy updating with little technical knowledge?
• Are you planning to update the site using proprietary software - such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver?
• Will training be required in the use of this software?
• Will updating be done in house or via a maintenance contract?

What about background maintenance tasks?

• Regular checking of internal and external links.
• Search Engine status and resubmissions
• Checking the competition?
• Overseeing content sourcing, editing and approval.

Cost:

Initial Costs.

• Design and Development.
• Domain registration.
• Hosting set up.

On Going Costs.

• Maintenance and updating.
• Hosting.
• Additional development costs if adding to site. B&BD

See: Before & After Website Designs