Site Plan Steps

Goals
What is the purpose of your proposed website? What business problems do you hope to solve with this site? What do you plan to sell, promote, or whom do you plan to inform? Once these decisions are made, the
Target Audience
Who do you plan to reach? A target audience is described by age, gender, education, occupation, income, preferred browser, computer device(PDA, desktop), Internet skills, etc. Knowing the answers to this question will help add the appropriate features to your site.
Function Research
What is your site's function for your audience? Why do your customers need you? What is the most important benefit your customers see that you offer? How will your customers use your site and what are their goals? Who are your competitors(What are their URLs?) What do you offer that is different from your competitor?
Site Research
This is the step where the previously mentioned needs are implemented. DO NOT attempt to move forward until your goals and target audience are defined. This is when a Site Map or "flowchart" of your site's pages will be done and looks something like this.
Content
The material needed to be on the site needs to be available to make the final design decisions. Without the newsletters, for example, the designer would wonder why the "news" page is necessary. If there is a "stack" of photos, but no "photo gallery", the process comes to a halt. In short, the more information you can have ready for us, the sooner we can finish your project. Writing for the Web is as unique as writing for newspapers or magazines. Be brief or they[the reader] will be gone.
Design
This is a time-consuming portion process that includes choosing the fonts, colors, and layouts appropriate to the needs of your customers and viewers. The success of the design process depends on how much information is available from the previous steps. If the previous details are lacking, the design will take much longer.
Review
We check the look, layout, and flow of the site at this point, as keywords, descriptions and other data for search engine placement.
Testing
We then upload the pages to a test area to check the look, layout, flow, and links in various browsers, operating systems and with various users. Broken links are the sign of a broken site. We don't want this for you.
Promote
While we can do a lot of work and research to promote your site, there are a number of other places to promote this online product. Your website should be listed on business cards, newsletter, stationery, on your email addresses, and even as part of your outgoing message on your voicemail. Any product that promotes your business, should have your website listed on it.
Analyze
Checking the site on a regular basis and checking in with customers helps to find any problems with your site. Checking site statistics helps to locate and solve problems after the site is launched. With a monthly maintenance plan, these solutions will be online much more quickly giving you a happy clientele and a more successful business.
Update
This phase is a never-ending process. There is always something new to add: newsletters, new products, new customers, new locations -- the list can be endless. But if all the other steps have been done to this point, updating your site will be much easier.