10 Essentials for Building a Solid Web Site: Planning

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by Aaron West

It seems everyone wants a web presence these days. Can you blame them? Technology companies are at the core of financial news today. Everyone wants to know what's going on with the Technology stocks. People are using the Internet as a shopping and resource tool more every day. Internet revenues seem to be growing at an exponential rate. An Internet presence costs less than maintaining a physical location, and employs less people. A web-based business appears to be a win-win for everyone.

So why are there so many poorly designed, poorly implemented pages out there? Why are so many people (95%) losing money on the net? My opinion is that they forgot the essentials for building a solid site.

What are the essentials?

1. Planning

A site has to be well-planned. If a site appears to be thrown together, then most likely it was. Users can tell.

First, prepare a mission statement. It doesn't have to be long. A sentence or two should be plenty. In that mission statement, try to summarize exactly what you are trying to accomplish with the site. Once you've done that, the rest of the planning will come easier. The rest of the planning will simply become a means toward arriving at your mission statement. If you begin to lose sight of your mission statement, then write it on the top of all your outlines. Or better yet, use your mission statement as the title of your template pages.

Now to the hard-core planning. In my experience, I've found the best way to be with a notepad and a pen (or a pencil with a good eraser). First, lay out a site map in a flow chart style. Stick to that flow chart religiously. Once you deviate from your planned site map, you create almost twice the workload for yourself.

Once you have your site map drawn out, outline your home page on pen and paper. Draw out your tables and the file names you'll be linking to. Sketch your graphics out and position them accordingly. Note where you want to place any scripts or animations. Even if you aren't the world's greatest artist or your handwriting is tough to decipher, you're well on your way to painting that picture in your head.

Now, outline each individual page you link to from your home page. As you begin with each page, ask yourself 'what is the purpose of this page?' Sometimes you'll find there is little purpose in a page, and you'll delete it from the site map. All the better. It's best to find your flaws before you're too deep into the project.

Now you start the coding/designing process. With a strong outline to guide you, not only will you work faster, but you'll eliminate future mistakes and changes.

Your vision will probably change to some degree during the creation process, forcing you to either re-map or redesign some of the pages.. When that happens, get the same notepad and pen out, and modify from there. Trust me, laying out a site on paper is much faster than laying it out in code.

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