4 Things To Consider When Planning Your Website

Before you embark on developing your website, it is a good idea to take some time to create a comprehensive plan. You should consider the purpose of the website, your target audience, as well as the content which should be included.

Purpose: What Will Your Website Accomplish?

The first step in planning your website is to determine its exact purpose. This is an extremely important step, as a website without a well-defined purpose often lacks continuity between its pages.

It will also be helpful to determine your short term and long term goals for your website? This will better help your web developer design a website which meets your needs.

Audience: Who Are You Visitors?

Next, you should define your target audience. Your target audience will be those people that you want to visit your website.

By knowing your website’s audience, you will be able to create an effective website, built to appeal to them. For example, think about how you might approach the task of developing a website for preschoolers as opposed to a website for college grads. Obviously, you should keep your target audience in mind when making crucial decisions about your website.

Accessibility: Aim For Maximum Compatibility

In addition to knowing how best to appeal to your audience, it is also important to create a website that can be easily used by your audience. This consideration is known as accessibility.

Some items that you should consider with regard to accessibility include:

• Screen Resolution. Most websites should be designed for a 1024 x 768 screen resolution. If, however, your target audience includes gamers and other computer enthusiasts, for example, you might opt to develop your website for a greater screen resolution.
• File Formats. When including media in your website, such as images or videos, be sure to use the most common file formats. This will ensure that most of your visitors can appreciate all that your website has to offer.
• Compliance. As we covered in our article Is Your Website Cross-Browser Compatible?, your website may not look the same in all browsers. As a result, to ensure maximum compatibility it is a good idea to fully test your website across multiple browsers and platforms, as well as code W3C compliant XHTML and CSS.
• Hardware. Sometimes, visitors access websites using PDA’s or smart phones. If this is the way that many of your visitors might access your website, it will be important for you to consider creating a mobile version of your website.

Content: Text, Images, and Media

Finally, you will need to consider your website’s content. Keeping the website’s purpose in mind, gather together a list of the content that will be necessary and organize it to fit your target audience’s needs.

Don’t Include Everything

If you have a significant amount of content, it may be tempting to include all of it. However, in order to maintain consistency throughout your website, be sure to discard anything that is irrelevant or incompatible with your target audience.

Organize Content Into Logical Sections

It is important to determine a logical structure for your website and organize content accordingly. This step is crucial to having a website which is easy to navigate.

You might find that planning and developing a website is a time consuming process. However, by taking these steps in advance, you will avoid a lot of costly mistakes and ensure that your website is successful.