Before you go ahead and build a web site, you must at least know what your site is going to be about. Planning is probably one of the more boring parts of the web building process, but nevertheless, remains to be one of the most important . Planning can save you from many unnecessary headaches in the future.

There's no need to be very detailed. You need to at least know what you're trying to achieve.

Set your objectives

The first step in your basic plan is to set your objective . What is the purpose of your web site? What are you trying to achieve? It may seem quite straightforward but depending on what you want to achieve, your design can differ quite a bit.

Define your target market

It's easier to market your products when you focus on a specific target market. The more focused, the better. It's easier to create a presence when you know who your target audience is.

With respect to your web design, knowing your target market makes it easier to choose the appropriate images, color, and more importantly - words.

If you're trying to sell children products to parents, for example, you DO NOT want to use a black background for your web site, or use an image of a hunting gun as your logo, or start your sales letter with 'Dear Friend'.

Your web site will do a lot better, if you used pastel colors with an image of a teddy bear and a sales letter that starts with 'Dear Loving Parents'.

Check out the competition

The idea of competing with others who are more experienced than yourself can sometimes hold you back. But let me tell you a secret. Your competitors are there to help you.

Yup! They will tell you exactly what to include in your web site, so to speak.

So, go on. Visit your competitors' web sites. See what they have at their web sites. Ideas are bound to pop up in your head. Have a basic idea of what type of web sites others, in your market, have.

Create a sitemap

It would be handy to know what sort of information you're planning to include in your web site. Whether or not they will be on separate web pages. If so, how many web pages? And what these pages are, and how they link to each other.

A site map is a visual representation of your web site. When you have your web pages in the form of a map, it becomes easier to see the whole picture.

Having a picture of your whole web site will also make it easier to create a navigation system that is useful to your visitors.

Depending on your product, you may have different web pages for your site. Here are the more common pages:

About Us
Features
Benefits
Testimonials
Products and services
Order
Ezine
Affiliates
Links
FAQ
Contact Us

You don't have to include all of these pages. Just pick those that suit you most.

List existing material

Before you go around collecting and creating material for your web site, make a note of what you already have. If you already have most of your material, you can save a lot of time. Your existing material could be anything: your business logo, a color scheme, web images, images of your products.

If you're new to website building, are looking for an existing website or template, or are unhappy with your current designer, then be sure to contact us for details of solutions we can provide.