I Need a Website. Where Do I Start?

You want a website, huh? You might be asking questions like, where do I start? What should I do? What is a hosting company and which one should I use? How many pages should I have? What am I supposed to pay? Before we answer these great questions about your website, let’s slow down a bit and start over.

Because most web designers are only concerned with design, you should not talk to them until you first sit down with pen and paper or a team of people with pens and paper and solidify your goals, target audience, plans and accountability measurements. So, put the computer away (after you read this article) and forget about calling that web designer just yet.

1. What are your website’s goals?

Defining your website’s goals is the single most important aspect of a great website! It is human nature to automatically think about design first, but not defining your goals in the very beginning will kill your efforts in the long run. If I see a website with no visitors or hits, I can usually track the problem back to a lack of goals and plans.

This seems like a very easy question to answer, but you can really get hung up in the details, and the best approach is to think from general to specific. Write down general things like one of the following:

• This website will make money
• This website will help people
• This website will be an accountability website

Then write down more specific goals like:

• This website will make money by selling t-shirts in an online store
• This website will help sick people by writing articles about home healing remedies
• This website will help me stay accountable to losing weight by posting daily blogs of my diet and exercise routines

Once this is done, and you know what general direction you are headed, you can further specify your goals based on this direction and its’ audience.

2. Who is your audience?

Now that you know what your website will do, you need to know who your audience will be. Are you selling t-shirts to college kids or grandparents? Trust me, it would be just as hard to sell “CUTIE” T’s to grandma, as it would to sell those pastel doily T’s to a sorority. Know your audience. A lot of this will depend on what you sell, and based on that, you should be able to easily target the folks your website is going to attract.

If you have a hard time with figuring out your audience, it would be a great time to incorporate the help of an objective third party. Someone else will be able to get you out of the box, play devil’s advocate and get the juices flowing.

3. What is your plan?

Now that you know your goals and audience, you need a plan. A great plan will keep you on track and keep you from changing directions every time the wind blows. Let’s say you start a website that sells economic engine-less lawnmowers to people who believe in saving the environment. Your basic plan might include getting people to your website on a consistent basis and a way for those people to purchase lawnmowers with a credit card. We could write it down like this:

• Get people to my website on consistent basis
  • Write two blog articles a week about saving the environment (fresh content keeps people coming back)
  • Get people to comment on my Facebook fan page (that is linked back to my website) by asking 4 engaging questions a week.
  • Find 5 different blogs or forums where my target audience frequents and comment in at least 3 different posts per week for each of these blogs/forums.
• Allow people to purchase lawnmowers with a credit card
  • Integrate a shopping cart system into my website (this is where your web designer/developer can help you)

We can breathe easier, now. A lot of work is already complete, and you are probably ahead of most of your competition! However, we have one more point to talk about.

4. What are your accountability measurements?

Basically, how do you know if your plan is working? While it’s great to have a plan, you need to know if your plan is working. This is where web statistics come in very handy. Obviously, if I am selling lawn mowers, then my plan has to translate into cash, but in the beginning you need to know you are getting people to your website, and you need to know what they are looking at.

As this is a huge discussion with multiple points, we will revisit it in another article, but for now just know that on its most basic level your web hosting company should have web statistics you can browse that give you reports on many things including:

• Unique visitors
• Where your visitors are from
• Pages most visited
• How your visitors found you (search engines)

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Don’t worry if this is foreign to you, because a good web designer will find you a hosting company with great web stats and will teach you to use them. Also, make it a point to learn anything your web designer hasn’t taught you. Be a professional, this is your bread and butter!

Great! You now have written goals, a target audience, a plan and a way to see if your plan is working. It’s time to find a web designer. Trust me, if you take that much information into your local web shop, they will be grateful to have found a client like you, because your website will be much easier to design. Now, take a break, get some coffee, get a pen and a notepad and start mapping out your successful future!