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Plan your Web Site
Explore other Web sites
Plan a simple site to begin with. Maximum of 5-6 pages (let's not complicate
things until we've got the basics).
Visit your competitors' web sites
Remember to "shop your competition." Approach your competitors as though you
were a prospective customer or regular surfer.
Find Web sites like you want yours to be
Invest time in surfing the Net. Bookmark
sites you like and make notes on why you like them.Decide what you want your site to do
Start small.Define your goals
Create something quickly.
It is easy to refine it later.Decide who is your target audience
Employees? Couples? Customers? Men? Women? etc If men, what kind of men?
Men who play sports, Men who listen to a certain type of music? married men etc. Focus your first site on one
target.Define what actions you expect visitors to take after visiting your
site
Be specific. Examples:
Prospects and customers will subscribe to our email newsletter.
Customers will buy products from our affiliate programs; X and YDefine a "tone" for your Web site
This is an important step. Writing and
images in your site can project very different tones. Will your visitors
respond best to a buttoned-down, corporate approach? To one that is fresh
and lively? Or to a site that is technical and no-nonsense?Select a site to use as a model
Print pages from your model site.
Capture the way the page looks. DO NOT COPY someone else's work though.Does your model set the tone you want?
How will your tone be different?Does your model do the actions you want?
What other actions are needed? What
actions are not needed?Reduce the number of pages and actions to as few as possible
Keep your "starter" site to as few
pages as you can. It's easy to add more later.Copy relevant pages to your computer for study
Use the "Save" function (under "File") on
your Web browser to do this. DO NOT COPY someone else's work though.
Prepare your Site
Select the information you want to
present
What information will your visitors need to complete the actions you
want? For example : Information about a particular subject, reasons to
buy, reasons to return, pictures, prices etcGather information that you already have
Sources can be your own knowledge, affiliate program websites,
product specifications, news groups, articles etc.Determine what information you need to create
For your first site, use existing
sources as much as you can.Choose what to do yourself and what to
outsource
This plan assumes you already have a web site provider. If not, you'll have to
select a
web site host.
Decide how you will write your HTML pages
Will you do it yourself? or will you use
wysiwyg software |
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