Bringing your company or organization online is simple, affordable, and smart. You don’t have to know anything about computers or technology; you just have to use the right company or online service to help you. Most importantly you have to remember that your website is part of your business and you have to treat it like a business. In this post, I am going to explain a thought process for planning your website that you can use to help get everyone involved in the development of the site on the same page.

For your website to be effective, you have to create a plan it to address your goals. Here are some things to think about for your website:

• Define the Purpose and Goals of Your Website
• Define the Structure of Your Website
• Get a Name for Your Website
• Get a Home for Your Website
• Build an Attractive User-friendly Website
• Promote Your Website

This is an edited re-post of a very basic guide to planning a website that I contributed to URBANMarketingNetwork.com.

Define the Purpose and Goals of Your Website

The first thing you need to do is define what you expect out of your website. Do you want it to help increase name awareness, increase your revenue, build loyalty…what is the goal for your website? Then define your competition and the potential visitors you are competing for: who they are, what they need, their expectations… You should also define the action that you want your visitors to ultimately take: make contact with you, purchase from you online…change behavior (stop smoking…).

Define the Structure of Your Website

Next define your website’s structure. Visit some Websites (competitors, industry sites, and others) and evaluate what you like and don’t like about them. Then make a list of all of the pages you want on your website. Think about the color scheme, theme, and content you want on each page; the text, pictures, forms, functions, audio, video, etc. Make sure you structure your site to address your goals and especially the needs of your potential visitors. Content is the biggest task in getting your website online so take time to really think about what you want on your website.

Get a Name for Your Website

In order for visitors to visit your website, you have to have a domain name. A domain name is a unique name that identifies your website and allows a web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Netscape) find your website. To get a domain name you have to register the name with a registrar. Make a list of possible names that are:

• Unique – unique names can help brand your organization. If possible, use the name of your organization in your name. Dell.com instead of goodcomputers.com (although you can use multiple domains pointed to the same website). If your name is too long or taken, try to use a name that describes your product or service.
• Short – shorter names are easier to remember and it will be less likely to make a mistake typing it. Yahoo.com instead of onlinesearchengine.com

Next, you have to determine if the names are available. There are many online services for registering domain names (we also provide domain registration). If possible, you should register all of the names on your list to limit the chance that a competitor might use a similar name to take advantage of your online success. You may also want to register common misspellings of names to increase the likeliness that visitors will find you if they make a mistake typing. Lastly, you can register names that end with .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc.

Get a Home for Your Website

Next, you need to find a hosting company for your website. A hosting company provides you with space to save your website files and access to the files on the internet so visitors can get to your site. Once you have your hosting company you will point you domain name to the hosting company’s computer. Make sure you select a hosting company that provides you and your staff personalized email accounts (yourname@yourorganization.com). This will add to the professionalism of your email communications.

Build an Attractive User-friendly Website

Now everything is in place to create your website. Whether you do it yourself or you hire a professional company, make sure your website addresses your goals, the needs of your visitors, and delivers your site structure in a visually appealing yet easy to use fashion. You don’t want a site with a lot of overly flashy graphics or animation all over the page, you want visitors to focus on your content and message. You want visitors to take a specific action and you don’t want the design to get in the way of that. Your design should help brand your company while driving visitors to take actions that support your goals.

Promote Your Website

After your site is launched, you have to get people to actually visit the site. You can optimize your site to position high in search engines, create web banner advertisements to be placed on other websites, submit your site to online directories, participate in social networks and blogs, and several other web promotion techniques. If nothing else, put your web address on your business cards, emails, brochures, letterhead, and any other communication that you send out. If you have radio or TV commercials make sure you tag the website address. Basically, when you promote your offline organization make sure to let people know that you are also online.

Manage and Maintain Your Website

Overtime you are going to need to make changes, if only to keep the site interesting to repeat visitors. You should think about who is going to manage your website. Will you take the time to add and change text and pictures or will you contract someone.

This is a very basic overview for someone just getting started with a small website. If you need help getting your internet house in order, leave me a comment.

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