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10 Essentials for Building a Solid Web Site:
Planning
It seems everyone wants a web presence
these days. Can you blame them? Technology
companies are at the core of financial news
today. Everyone wants to know what's going
on with the Technology stocks. People are
using the Internet as a shopping and resource
tool more every day. Internet revenues seem
to be growing at an exponential rate. An
Internet presence costs less than maintaining
a physical location, and employs less people.
A web-based business appears to be a win-win
for everyone.
So why are there so many poorly designed,
poorly implemented pages out there? Why are
so many people (95%) losing money on the
net? Our opinion is that they forgot the
essentials for building a solid site.
What are the essentials?
1. Planning
A site has to be well-planned. If a site
appears to be thrown together, then most
likely it was. Users can tell.
First, prepare a mission statement. It doesn't
have to be long. A sentence or two should
be plenty. In that mission statement, try
to summarize exactly what you are trying
to accomplish with the site. Once you've
done that, the rest of the planning will
come easier. The rest of the planning will
simply become a means toward arriving at
your mission statement. If you begin to lose
sight of your mission statement, then write
it on the top of all your outlines. Or better
yet, use your mission statement as the title
of your template pages.
Now to the hard-core planning. We've found
the best way to be with a notepad and a pen
(or a pencil with a good eraser). First,
lay out a site map in a flow chart style.
Stick to that flow chart religiously. Once
you deviate from your planned site map, you
create almost twice the workload for yourself.
Once you have your site map drawn out, outline
your home page on pen and paper. Draw out
your tables and the file names you'll be
linking to. Sketch your graphics out and
position them accordingly. Note where you
want to place any scripts or animations.
Even if you aren't the world's greatest artist
or your handwriting is tough to decipher,
you're well on your way to painting that
picture in your head.
Now, outline each individual page you link
to from your home page. As you begin with
each page, ask yourself 'what is the purpose
of this page?' Sometimes you'll find there
is little purpose in a page, and you'll delete
it from the site map. All the better. It's
best to find your flaws before you're too
deep into the project.
Now you start the coding/designing process.
With a strong outline to guide you, not only
will you work faster, but you'll eliminate
future mistakes and changes.
Your vision will probably change to some
degree during the creation process, forcing
you to either re-map or redesign some of
the pages.. When that happens, get the same
notepad and pen out, and modify from there.
Trust me, laying out a site on paper is much
faster than laying it out in code.
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