|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Home > Start-Up > E-Biz Tutorial > Planning | |
|
|
|
|
Pre-planning Your Site |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Who are you? 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 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:
"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."
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.
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.
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. An exception to this would be if you are wanting to lead your visitor into making just one response. This is called the Most Wanted Response. For instance, if your Most Wanted Response is to get your visitor to subscribe to your newsletter, your page would consist of benefit-laden copy that induces a mouse click to just one page: your subscribe page.
Decide on the main colors you'll use throughout your site. A good place that can help you choose colors is PageResouce. Another good tool is the ColorPicker. This cool little app lets you easily copy the RGB hex code from web pages. Very handy when you find a color on another site that you want to use on your site.
Now you can decide on the finer points within your site. Things such as forms, graphics, special effects, optimizing your site for search engines, and tracking the performance of your site. These resources will be helpful as you move your site from paper to your computer. Create forms,
polls, and surveys for your site Create Buttons and Bullets Find graphics for your site Create effects with Javascript
Click here for next tutorial...
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Building a great site requires preparation. By laying out the
basic framework for your site, you can avoid many mistakes and oversights. This
preparation helps you to focus on your goals, and it helps you build a site which is truly
beneficial for your visitors.
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. 
