Fist do some home work:
- Look what your competitors are doing. What do they have on there site? What do you like on there site? What don’t you like on there site?
- Look at non-related web sites. What do you like that about that site? I like that because it’s easy to navigate. I like that site because it has a cool intro page.
- Think of theme for your site. If you sell real estate in Hawaii might want to go with flower theme or a ocean theme. But most web artist will come up with theme for you if you can’t think of one yourself.
- Color… Generally most web sites use 2 or 3 colors. Take a look at this web site to see how color affects emotions.
- How do you want the web site to work? Are you going to need to add new pages often? E-commerce? Will people need to log-on to access information? Will people need to up load any thing? Will it need to interact with other software like an inventory program? Not that you will need to know exactly how the site is going to work but it will help your designer see what your vision of the web site will be.
- How will people find your site? Most web surfers find web sites using search engines like Google. How ever some web site owners prefer to tell people about there site and do not want to make there site easily readable by search engines. Learn more about”Search Engen Optimaztion”.
- Growth. What is the future of your website? Are there features that you plan on adding to the site later? How big can this site get?
- Who will upkeep your site? And how will the upkeep be done?
A good web designer should ask you most of these questions before they start construction of your site. It is always a good idea to set goals for your designer so there are no confusion with your expectations of your new website.
!!!Important!!! Make sure the domain name (ex: “your-website-name.com”) and web hosting is register to you and that all emails concerning your account go to your e-mail address. Also, make sure you make hard copies of your user names and password for you domain name and web hosting account. Some times your designer my not always be available to make emergency changes to your site. I hope this helps you with your quest to build the best site on the world wide web.
Scott Talley
CEO
MantaWeb.com
808-283-7001
Tags: first website, new, web designer, web theme
