Overview

House Building a website, your home on the internet, is much like building a house. Are you going to build it yourself, or have someone build it for you? What kind of house do you need? Beyond basic shelter, what other functions will the house have, e.g., do you entertain frequently? work at home? play lots of sports? cook gourmet meals? What styles of architecture do you like? What is your budget?

When considering plans for your website, there are many questions to ask as well.

Who is your audience? What information are they looking for?

A top priority in designing your site is making it easy for visitors to find the information they want. Perhaps your site will be oriented primarily to a particular type of visitor (people who want to buy widgets), or maybe you have several different audiences (local members of your organization, people considering joining your organization, former members who have moved away but want to keep in touch).

By carefully considering who your audience is, we can design a structure for your site that meets their needs.

What look-and-feel should your site convey?

Are you carefree, fun and easy-going? Are you a traditional business rooted in a rich history or set of traditions? Are you high tech and on the cutting edge? Your website may well be the first contact a potential client has with your business; we'll make sure that first impression conveys the right message about you.

What functions do you need?

A site can be as simple as a few pages of information plus a contact form to send you a message (i.e., an online brochure), or it can be an expansive collection of tools, such as a membership site or online store. Some features you may wish to consider:

  • E-Commerce
    • single or a few products
    • multiple products
    • full-fledged shopping cart with inventory management
    • payment options: PayPal (either staying on your site or going to PayPal to complete the transaction), credit cards, e-checks
  • Membership Site
    • password-protected member directory
    • single password shared by many users, or individual passwords
  • Email Newsletter
    • how frequently will it be sent?
    • how many people on your list?
    • add sign-up box to your website
    • pay attention to CAN-SPAM laws!
  • Calendar
    • single calendar, multiple calendars
    • who updates it, and how frequently?
  • Photo Gallery
    • how many pictures? will a single page of selected images suffice, or do you need a large, database-driven gallery?
    • will an online service such as Flickr or Picasa be useful?
  • Social Media
    • Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
    • links from your site, or display 'feeds' of your current information/postings?
  • Blog
    • do you have something to say? maybe a blog would be a good place to say it!
  • RSS Feeds
    • content from your site can be syndicated through an RSS feed, or perhaps you want to display content from another site through its feed. (Not familiar with RSS feeds? Check out this easy-to-understand article on RSS feeds from Six Apart.)

How will the site be updated, and how frequently?

Keeping your site up-to-date is vital to its success. We can develop a maintenance plan, where Red Letter Design will update your site for you as you request, or we can build features into your site to allow you to update the site as you desire.

How will people find your site?

The four main ways people find your site are:

  1. You told them about it. Your website address should be prominently displayed in your marketing materials. You may want to consider creating new business cards and other business collateral. (We can help! We do print work as well.)
  2. Someone else told them about it. Let other people know about your site, and let other websites know about it, too. Perhaps there is an industry association website where you could add a link to your site, or you could exchange links with one of your business associates? (Note: avoid link farms! Links to your website are only valuable when they come from trusted sources.)
  3. They found it through a search engine. The goal of a search engine, like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, is to help people find what they're looking for on the internet. The better those search engines understand what your site is about, the better job they can do sending traffic your way. We follow industry best practices to clearly identify the key content of your site, helping Google and other seach engines to match your site to interested seekers.
  4. They clicked on an online ad. Depending on your market, online advertising may be a good source of ready buyers to your site, or it can be a money pit, charging you signficant amounts of money to send uninterested visitors to your site. Red Letter Design does not offer search engine marketing services at this time, but we can help you determine if this would be a valuable service for you to pursue.

What is your budget?

Your budget matters. If you can give us an idea of your budget, we can tailor a solution to meet that price. If we can't build all of the features you desire within that goal, we can devise a phased development plan to get you on the web now, and to add features in the future as your finances permit.

© 2010. Red Letter Design.