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Step One: Gather Information and Plan Strategies |
It's really important to start with a good foundation of accurate information. I believe that knowing your needs and knowing your company helps me provide a better product for you. It's also extremely valuable to know what your competition online is doing. I can't stress enough how important this step is. Here's how I approach this step:
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Get to know my client and their business
- Establish goals: purpose / goals for the site
- Understand budget constraints
- Establish a Time frame; are there time constraints?
- Find out what's working for them now
- Learn about your competition online
- Who are they and what do they do or sell?
- Where are they located?
- When did they start their site?
- How do they do business?
- who links to them
- what information do they provide
- what keywords are they using
- what are their strengths and weaknesses
- how do they advertise
- Plan site design and navigational structure of site. This can be simple or complex, depending on the size of the web site.
- Collect or Create Content for your site (text and images): you can provide me with text from brochures, other web sites, write more text yourself or have me do it, or any combination of the above.
- Discover the basic list of keywords and important phrases related to your company - going through your product or service information is the perfect way to get started with keywords. Another great method is looking at your competitor's sites, examining their keywords, descriptions and text for ideas.
- Choose colors for the site. Color choice is important because from a psychological standpoint, colors evoke certain emotions and establish a tone for your site.
- Next, I provide the client with a rough draft of site look and feel for approval. I usually make a template page and put a sample web page up on the web for your approval.
- Set up hosting account, order data encryption to make the site secure if needed for selling stuff or password protected areas - also known as SSL, or Secure Sockets Layering.
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