Aims & Purpose

• Whilst your corporate aims may be largely the same, the purpose may be slightly different for your website than for your existing business.
• So take a few minutes to jot down both your aims and objectives for your business, and for the website itself.
• You may find that you want to say more about your purpose and your reason for starting your business website.
• Keep in mind that your potential web customers and clients cannot meet you in person, and so it will take more effort on your part to put yourself across to them.
• There are several things that you can include on your site that will make you seem more approachable (and therefore familiar and trustworthy!):-
• Profile page with a short biography of yourself, and key staff members or partners when appropriate
• Photos of your physical workplace, yourself and employees.
• Easy to understand site layout and text
• It is absolutely essential that you have at least one page, usually called contacts page, where you offer your full mailing address, phone numbers, fax number and email address. In fact many directories will not list your site unless you provide these details.
• This may seem harsh, but remember that there are unscrupulous people around, and many responsible web users are doing their best to ensure that the web marketplace is secure and safe.
• This will be good for all of us - consumers and business folk alike.

Brainstorming

Your target at this stage is to come up with as many keywords and key phrases as you can. Don't get distracted by the label 'keyword', simply think of all the things that make who you are and what you do different, better - describe your service, your products, your location, your ethos, your flexibility, how you do things, your ethics, your market, your dreams, your goal. Few people search for only a single word, so what would you search for to find your business should include phrases. Come up with as many phrases as you can. Ideally at least fifty.

You will find that the fruits of you brainstorming will be valuable in giving a structure to your content. For each page you will concentrate on a specific theme, and thus each page will have its own unique set of keywords (this is why your target was to come up with at least 50). With the keywords and phrases in mind, write your content, be sure to use an informative opening sentence, and use the keywords/ phrases as headings, and naturally within the text. Page titles and descriptions/intros

You may also wish to create your own meta tags (these title/description/keywords are inserted into the code at the top of each page. This code is not visible on the page itself, but is used by search engines to list your site), so that you can better control how your site will appear to the search engines that use these to identify what you site is about.

Title - This should ideally be not more than 40 characters long, because several search engines only display that amount of your title, (max is 60 characters)

Description - Ideally 15 -28 words long, and it should be written in sentences.

Keywords - Your keywords for your page. I normally have 2-5 core keywords that describe the whole site (location, main service or product), and then several more keywords and phrases that describe the specific page. One thing that you could include here are common misspellings

Specific pages that you may want to include

Just a quick run through of some of the pages that you should consider having on your site, and what to put on them:-

Home page
- include your goals/objectives or mission statement
- list all important services and links on the site
- make sure the title is relevant and clear

Contacts page
- ideally with a photo of you
- and or workforce, bricks and mortar shop
- full address and contact details

Site Map
- site map or site index is recommended for all sites 20 pages or more
- site search on larger sites (over 100 pages)

Terms & Conditions
- privacy policy
- and terms & conditions of sale & service

FAQ
- fabulous opportunity to answer the questions you want answered!

Feedback
- provide a form for questions & feedback

Portfolios
- portfolio (folio) page so that people can view examples of your work

Links page
- this is one of the best tools for increasing traffic to your site

Finally, remember that people want to know what other people have said about you, so be sure to collect testimonial for inclusion throughout your site.

The Message

There is no mysterious secret about planning a website. Essentially it is about putting down your ideas logically, and writing your copy in a clear way. Before you put anything on paper at all, you will need to think about what you do that is unique or specific to your business.

Whilst many of you will already have publicity materials that you will wish to make use of on your website, I think it is essential for you to put them to one side and take another look at your business. Because one thing that stands out more than any other on the web is old material. We all need to periodically re-write and update what we say about our business so that it appears fresh and energetic.

One of the worst things you can do is bore your visitors... a single click and they can go somewhere else, and they may never come back.

So go back to the beginning again. Remind yourself of your target market, as it may be slightly or totally different on the web than in your physical office or shop. You will probably find that your business and its message have evolved, and that this process is very positive psychologically for you and well as essential to a great site.