123s in How to Plan your Website

In planning your website, the first task on your plate would be setting the objectives:

1. Determine your main message. What is your value proposition and who is this directed to? Your message should tell your audience what makes your product or service different from your competitors.

2. Determine the general outline of your website. Segregate your content into a logical parts. Make sure you have all the content to support your objectives. But not too much as your customers don't expect to be reading a novel. Web users browse through web pages.

3. Scope. Understand what your website can and cannot do. Make a list of things describing what your website is and what it is not. Making an effort to draw the boundaries early on as this will save you all the pain of trying to finish your site later on when have scope creep.

Secondly, you need to organize your content:

1. One approach is to organize from the bottom up. Then, define transition pages like product lists to access product details and gallery to access photo details. After defining transition pages, you would be able to define your home page.

2. Define the layout of major pages. Since you already have most of your content, design your page layouts so that you emphasize certain parts of your pages that will support your objectives for the website.

3. Consider the volume of text that you will be placing in your layout. Finalize your copy, including headings and subheadings so users can easily browse through your page and intuitively find what they are looking for.

Lastly, you need to choose your domain:

1. Your domain name should be as short as possible. Nobody whats to type a long URL.

2. No hyphens for ease in typing.

3. Maximum of 3 words that summarizes what your site is all about. This way it's easy to remember.

Evaluate the list of domain name registrars and determine which is best for your needs. Remember that a detailed plan is a battle half won. To win the whole battle, you need to execute.