When you decide you want to publish a website, what do you do? The information here is very similar to my Write Your First Blog post.
There are many questions to consider before you start developing your website. Many people decide to publish a website before they even look at some of the most important questions that you must consider before you even go ahead and publish a website. After they have submitted their website they realise how much is missing. You don’t want this to happen to you.
I have put together some of the questions that I ask my clients before I go ahead and design their website and publish it.
Take a look at the list below and answer these questions before you consider developing and publishing your website.
Requirements:
- Which host will you sign up with? I have been using justhost for 3 years now and I am very happy with their services.
- What is the domain name for your website? You have to make sure that it is available first. Do a search on Google and see if that name is taken.
- Will your website target your country or the world i.e. www.yourname.com.au or www.yourname.com? Will your site have www or will you omit it from the URL? This is important as you want all traffic to be directed to the correct URL i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com is different to http://yourdomain.com.
- How many web pages are you going to have? You need to develop this information and be happy with the design, pages and layout before you decide to develop your website. Make sure you are happy with your decision here as it is very challenging to change your pages and layout ones you site is live.
- What template or theme will you setup for your website? The layout is very important as well. Depending on your audience you want to attract that is the template or theme you will need to implement on your website or blog.
- What will you include in your About Me page? Give your audience something that will make them want to purchase your product or do business with you. Be honest about what you have done and or currently doing.
- What Information about your services or products will you provide? This part will attract people to visit your website, the more information you add here the more people you will attract to your website.
- Do you have a portfolio? It would be great to add a portfolio page in your website. This will populate as your business grows.
- Are you going to provide links in your website? What kind of links? Very important for SEO and promoting your sight with Google, Bing and Yahoo. One of the best methods is reciprocal linking especially with sites that promote the same or similar services as yours.
- Will you be adding an email address, mobile phone number and business address in the Contact Us page? Will you add a contact us form? Very important to note that if you are going to add an e-mail address link visible, to make sure it is a domain e-mail i.e. your domain name is www.yourdomain.com and the e-mail address should be yourname@yourdomain.com. This is a great method to further promote your business and website.
- Do you have an ABN “Australian Business Number” for Australia? Other countries have different business numbers, if so would you include it in your website? This is great for business; you want potential clients to know that you are legitimate and that you are here to stay.
- What Meta tag and Meta description will you add to promote your website? This requires a bit of research as this will either promote your website quickly or leave you at the end of the line somewhere where no one will find you.
- SEO “Search Engine Optimisation” how are you going to promote your website to search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo? Do you have a Google account? If not, then I suggest that you create one!! One of the most important part of promoting your website is with one of the most important search engines in the world, “Google”. You want to know what goes on behind your back with some incredible FREE tools that Google so nicely have included for you to use once you sign up. The following are just a few of the many tools you will have access to: Webmaster tools, Analytics, Google places, Profile, YouTube, Calendar and Feedburner.
- Are you going to have an RSS “Really Simple Syndication” feed? You need to have this in place if you want people to sign up and follow your feeds. You can use Feedburner from Google mentioned previously.
- Are you going to promote your website with social networks like facebook and twitter? If you don’t then you are going to miss out on a potential market worth millions of visitors. Do the sums and you will see that it is very important to get involved with these social networks?
- Will you be including YouTube videos, photos or tutorials? How will you attract people to your site if you don’t give them something they want or need?
- What about a testimonial page? This is just as important as the above. Try and get all your clients, business partners and friends to submit testimonials or reviews about your services or products.
- It is very important to maintain a vigilant eye on your site. If you use a CMS “Content Management System” like Joomla or WordPress, then you will realise that these CMS get updated regularly. Security updates, module, component or plugins you use will always get updates.
- Security. What kind of security will you be implementing? Depending on your CMS or just plain html website. Since I am using WordPress for this blog, they have many plugins that help you maintain a secured website.
- One more important factor to remember! and one that many forget to do is “BACKUP”. Backup your website when you first setup and publish your website. Create new backups every time you update your site. Have a copy on the server and one on your local computer or laptop. Believe me I have had my share of incidents without a backup and the feeling is not very nice.
Good luck with your website and remember if you have any questions, post a comment here and I will be glad to help you.
If you need a website developed, need to promote your website and services then send me an e-mail. My rates are very economical ?
