- Decide Exactly What You Want from Your Web Site
- Decide on a Structure for Your Site and Develop a Rough Site Plan
- Decide What Interactive Elements You Need
- Decide What Graphics You Want to Include
- Write the Text for Each Page in Your Site
- Determine Your Budget and Timeframe for the Project
- Establish Your Web Infrastructure
- Collect Your Toolkit
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Decide What Interactive Elements You Need
Interactive elements in your Web site include such features as contact forms, appointment calendars, chat rooms, discussion forums (also called message boards), and order forms. At the simplest level, an interactive form can be used to collect information—for example, the visitor's name, email address, and topic of interest—and then mail that information to you automatically. At the most complex level, interactive elements such as online payment processing and shopping carts can handle some of the most demanding needs your customers may have.
As you develop your site plan, keep one eye on the needs of your customers and the other eye on your budget. Adding just one interactive element to your Web site can easily quadruple the cost of the entire project. Put a big question mark beside each interactive element you think you might like to include and ask your Web developer-candidates how they would suggest you accomplish your goal for each interactive element, without breaking your piggybank. If your developer-candidate cannot suggest a low-cost method for accomplishing your purpose for an interactive element, ask for a separate quote for that element. Having potentially expensive Web site elements itemized in the statement of work makes it easy to remove such elements without making the developer-candidates go back and revise their bids when you decide you have to leave something out to stay within your budget constraints.