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Pre-Planning Your Web Site

By Brett Krkosska

Building a great site requires preparation. By laying out the basic framework for your site, you can avoid many mistakes and oversights. Most importantly, this preparation helps you to focus on your goals, and it helps you build a site which is truly beneficial for your visitors.

The Basics

Visitors to your site will decide whether or not to stay and browse your site depending on how well you answer the following questions:

• Who are you?
• What is your site about?
• What do you have for me?
• Why should I stay and browse your site?

Answer these questions in the first fold of your home page. Write these four questions down and keep them in the forefront as you design your site. People don't like confusion and will click out of your site without hesitation if you aren't clear.

Your Number 1 Goal

Your top priority is to build a site with real visitor benefits. People are more likely to stay at your site, and bookmark it for future visits, if you offer something of value. People will perceive value in your site by doing the following:

1. Clearly and boldly state your main benefit in the top right portion of your web page. Be careful not to confuse a benefit with a feature. A feature describes what something is, while a benefit tells what your product or service will do for the visitor. People buy the benefit produced by a feature.

2. A benefit is impersonal and cold until your visitors can visualize themselves enjoying it. Describe the uses of your benefit in ways that connect them to the pleasure of using it. For instance:

"This bread maker will fill your home with the delicious and warm aroma of home-made bread just like grandma used to make - without the mess and in half the time."

3. Make it easy for people to get the benefit and prompt them to take action. You do this by giving them several different methods of getting your product or service - mail in their order, order online, order by fax, etc. Ease their fears of taking action with a lifetime money-back guarantee. To encourage immediate action you can offer a special price if they order by a specified deadline, or offer valuable freebies related to your product.

Designing Your Site

Now it's time to actually plot out the physical design of your site. This is where you will decide on the look and functional aspects of your site. Do this on paper first and use it as a guide when building your site on your computer.

• Use a Consistent Design

Design your pages with a consistent theme. The layout, colors, and navigation should not vary greatly. Try not to crowd your pages with too many graphics and bright colors. Use lots of white space as a component of your site and you'll avoid a confusing 'busy' look.

• Navigation

Decide on a navigational structure that is consistent throughout your site. You want to make it easy for people to find what they're looking for no matter where they are within your site. Decide on a set of navigation links for your web pages that point to the major areas of your site.

While not a hard and fast rule, you generally want to prevent visitors from having to use their browser's Back button to pull up previously viewed pages. For a large site this is not always possible, so a good method is to provide a hierarchical "You Are Here" set of links which shows the placement of a page within your site.