Website Design

First things first

You need to decide what it is you want your website to do, to achieve or to accomplish. You may not want to everything at first, but you need to have an overall plan so that what is created in the early stages will support things you might add later. Websites exist for many purposes…

• Online Business Card
• Online Brochure
• Selling products / Services
• Obtaining / Managing Information

The question to ask yourself is – "How can a website improve some aspect of my work?". Once you've done that, you can move on to the next stage - deciding what you actually do want a website to do for you.

• Show your products
• Explain what you do
• Collect information
• Sell products or services
• Provide after-sales information
• Offer free samples
• Present an image gallery
• Show people where you are
• Provide a diary of events
• Collect basic pre-sales information
• Provide online quotations or estimates
• Take bookings

OK - so what's the bottom line ?

To start with you will need somewhere to ‘host’ your website pages. You then need a domain name or ‘web address’ for your website ie. www.yourcompany.com. You will want email addresses that tie in with the web address i.e. yourname@yourcomapny.com. You can find out more about domain names and hosting packages.

Once you have sorted a name and some webspace you are next task is the main part of the entire website project, the DESIGN !