A critical barrier to the success of website design or enhancement project is poor planning. Great websites are the product of effective planning … or blind luck. Unless you’re a gambler, you should answer the following questions before you approach a website designer or developer:

1. What is the primary purpose of your website? 

Do you want to distribute information or provide training? Sell more products and services? Increase your newsletter subscription rate? Encourage potential customers to visit your physical business location? Provide enhanced customer service to your existing clients?
You should be able to clearly define your website’s purpose before initiating a web design or web development project.

2. Can you provide well written, completed content?
Website content is the heart of a website. Many website professionals will not start a project without completed content. It is important that you can either provide the content or identify the person(s) responsible for providing the content. Also, you want to ensure that your content is “web ready” and is focused on the needs of your visitors. A great website design can be rendered useless by 14 pages of scrolling text … or with a whopping two sentences per page.
If your website content is not ready, what is your timeframe for providing completed content? Who is responsible for writing the content? Do you require writing services, such as the services of a copywriter or journalist?

3. How will potential customers find your website?
How do you plan to market your website? Will you place the site address on your business cards and print marketing materials? Will you advertise your website to your newsletter subscribers? Will you advertise your website on a commercial or in the local yellow pages? Will you rely on search engine placement?

If search engine placement is important (it should be), you will want to identify your desired keywords. Do you want customers to find you when they Google “ugly green t-shirts”? The sooner you can identify this information, the better for your long term SEO strategy. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ongoing and often separate process; however it is important that your website changes don’t contradict effective SEO strategies. Your desired keywords should be effectively used throughout your web copy and in your web page meta tags.

4. How often do you plan to update your website?
Do you plan to update your website regularly? What does regularly mean: daily, monthly, quarterly, or infrequently as information changes? Are there dynamic areas of your website that require ongoing maintenance such as a newsletter archive area?

5. Who is responsible for ongoing website maintenance?
Will you or your staff maintain the website? Do you have the necessary skills to update the website? If you will rely on the services of a webmaster, how often will you communicate the website changes? What are your turnaround time requirements? What is the scope of your maintenance activities: textual changes, newsletter distribution, blog management, shopping cart maintenance, site design enhancements, search engine optimization etc.? Identifying the scope of your ongoing maintenance activities will be important in selecting the appropriate webmaster or perhaps a ‘web team’ is needed to support your ongoing website needs.

6. Do you know where you will host your website files? Or do you have an existing relationship with a web hosting provider?
Selecting an appropriate hosting package is of critical importance to the successful launch of your website. If you have an existing hosting provider, be sure to document and provide the features of your hosting plan to your website developer. You want to ensure that any technologies selected for your design or enhancement project are compatible with your existing hosting plan. If you do not have an existing hosting provider, be sure to ask your website design/developer for a listing of server requirements that are compatible with the technologies selected. Use this listing to research and select an appropriate hosting provider and package.

7. What is your ultimate vision for the website?
Do you already have an idea for future enhancements, such as video and audio streaming, online training, forums, blog etc? It is helpful to document and convey this information to your website developer. This will enable your web service provider to recommend or implement a scalable website that can grow with your vision.

8. What is your budget?
You should establish a realistic budget for your website, as you would for other areas of your business. Submit your documented, detailed project requirements to at least 3 website development firms/professionals. To assist the firm in providing an accurate quote, it is very important that you document your project requirements completely.

9. What are the milestones for successful project completion?
What are the measurable outcomes for determining the success of your project? You should define the milestone for project completion by identifying measurable goals.

Example:

• Build 5 web pages: Business contact information, company info, product descriptions, testimonials and frequently asked questions.
• Website color palette should include all colors in the existing business logo.
• Website should provide the functionality for clients to comment on articles.
• Allow customers to save their credit card information for future purchases.