HOW TO PLAN WEBSITE (Step 1)
Welcome to the first step. This website planning guide will help you form a solid
foundation.
Not sure what type of website you will build? Take a look at the different website types or if you already
know what type of website you're going to create take a look at help with finding your niche.
The first step to develop your website plan is to ask yourself the below 5 questions. You need to
keep your plan organized. To make it easy, your website planning tools will consist of:
- Who: will be your visitors? Will they be searching for information, products to buy or
maybe both. Whatever your website will be about, take a look at your competition, did they do a good job in the planning of their
website?
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- Is their website user friendly?
- Could you improve it?
- Are you able to easily find information you are seeking?
- How is their website design? - is it difficult to read? to many graphics?
- What: are you going to write about? Even though content is king, you need to make sure it
is relevant to your site. For most people, writing the content is a difficult task.
Write down your keywords and write a couple of sentences to start you out.
NOTE: If you try to build a site with limited knowledge on the theme, you will need to do a lot of
research for content. By building a site around a theme you have a lot of knowledge in, you will have no problems filling many pages
with relevant content.
- Where: are you going to host your site? Depending on what kind of website you have,
finding the best host does not have to be time consuming. Since this can be the biggest expense for your website, don't register until you
make sure that the hosting package fits your needs.
- Free Hosting: for any website that you plan on making money with or will be selling
products, using free hosting can be very unprofessional.
Down falls of free
hosting:
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- Have ads on your site
- Lack of support - if your website goes down, since you are not paying for the hosting space
they are not concerned.
- Have very little bandwidth (if you plan on very little traffic, then ok-can't image you would
want that)
- Many do not let you sell any advertising space
- URL's may be long and difficult to remember (http://janesmithshop.freewebs.com)
- The web host may be selling your e-mail address to make money
If you would like to look into free hosting, check out www.free-webhosts.com. They
have a searchable database with reviews of close to 300 free hosting companies.
- Paid Hosting Plans Many of these hosting companies have plans available
for you to pay monthly, quarterly or yearly. With a yearly plan you can get a free domain name for life as long as you stay with that
hosting company. Take a look at this website hosting
comparison chart to see which web hosting company would be right for you.
- When: do you plan on having your site ready? Set a realistic goal and try to
stick with it. If you set a goal of 30 days to get your plan completed and you are getting close to that time, don't publish the site if it
is still under construction. The website traffic that is able to find your site could be a lost because your site is lacking the information
you said was there and it is not and 9 times out of 10 they will not return.
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- How often will you update your site? Some information can change quickly, you may want
to update it weekly or monthly. I have been to many, many websites that show up in the top 20 places in the search engine but some of
the information contained is outdated and usually that is the information I was looking for, so I had to keep searching.
- Why: do you want to make your own website?
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- Keep family and friends updated?
- Sell your own products?
- Make money?
- Retired and take all the knowledge you learned over the years to help other people?
- Have a medical condition that other people may also be suffering with and have found information
that has helped you?
- Have a wedding planned and want to keep everyone informed?
This will be the biggest motivator for building your website. You need to have a topic that you are
interested in. By creating your website with something you are interested in, the site won't become stale with outdated
information.
- How: is the first step you just went through. Your next step in your strategic website
planning will be to help you find your niche.
Do you already know the type of website you will create but not sure of a domain name. See my information on
how to come up with a creative domain
name.
Found your niche already, but need keyword research?
Looking for an affordable hosting plan, see my web hosting comparison chart.
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