FAQ's > What should I be thinking about when planning my web site?
Here are some questions to ponder:
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Who is your target audience? Is this web site for existing customers, potential customers, investors, or all three? Who is most important for you to reach and what information do you most want to give them?
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What information do you want to provide? Make a list of everything that any potential visitor could want to know about your company and products first, and then start organizing it.
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What are your long term goals for this web site? If you plan to start small and expand later, it can be helpful to break your plan into "phases". The first phase might be a brochure site with PayPal buttons for a few products. The second might be a larger e-commerce site with an integrated admin so you can update your products. A third phase might be a robust cart application that can integrate with your inventory and suppliers.
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What are your real needs? It's easy to get carried away by what you could do with all this technology. But technology that you don't understand or isn't really integrated into your business system and practices is pretty useless (and can cause more headaches than it's meant to solve).
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What are other people doing? See what your competition is up to on the web. Look at major retailers like Amazon and Target. See what other similar-sized retailers in different niches are doing.
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What is your overall marketing strategy and how does your web site fit into it? Is your web site going to generate new leads? Where will your traffic come from?
For more in this vein, check out our Design Readiness Checklist and our article Your web site as a Marketing Vehicle.
