Ten Things to Consider before you Start your New Website

Here are the top 10 things to consider before choosing to design a new website. Thinking about these things ahead of time will help make your site a success.

1. What is your target market? Will your business meet the needs of your clients? Think about the goal of your website. Is it to sell items strictly from your online store or is it just informative?

2. How much money will it take to get your website up and running? Consider how much you will need to maintain your site per month? Will your site make you money rather than costing you more than it brings in?

3. Think about the domain name you will use. It should be short, easy to remember and tell people what to expect from your website. Spend a considerable amount of time choosing the right domain name because you cannot easily change it.

4. Consider where you will find a web host. A good website hosting company will be able to provide your customers with fast and reliable website views at a price that you can afford.

5. Think about who will design your website. You will be performing ongoing work with your website designer, so choose carefully. Make sure that you choose a designer that will povide you with one-on-one service without making you wait weeks.

6. While planning your site, research the keywords that people currently use to find your service or products so that you can provide the necessary optimized content as the website is being built.

7. Think about how you can best make your website easy to use. Remember that different kinds of people have different levels of technical savvy. Make sure your website is designed in such a way that all users will be able to easily get information and navigate your site.

8. How can you make your site visually interesting? Consider using pictures and a color theme throughout. While it is the text that sells your product, if your page is uninteresting to look at, it’s unlikely your text will get read. Make sure that you can supply your designer with all the pictures that you will use such as company or product photos.

9. Decide who will maintain and advertise your website. Will it be you or are you going to pay for your designer to do it? Think about the time involved and the different ways you will market your site.

10. Consider making use of social networking sites to get the word out about your new site, and think about starting a blog. Blogs can tell about the people behind your company and the issues in your industry. You may want to have a blog started just after or even at the same time that you launch your website.

Proper consideration and planning can make all the difference between making your new site a success or a failure, especially if this is your first time out.