Web site planning, a business checklist

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Web Site Planning, a Business Checklist

18 Questions Managers Must Ask

By Paul Clark Landmann¹

1. What are your goals? What do you expect the Web site to accomplish?

2. Have you defined your target audience?

3. Do you know what specific information or type of information your audience expects to find on your Web site–and what type of information will bring them back?

4. Have you reviewed Web sites promoting competing or comparable services or products?

5. Have you determined the physical requirements for your Web site? You might need more of less band width or storage capacity than most vendors offer in their standard packages. Most sites use much less capacity than they purchase.

6. Have you done a comparative study of Web service providers offering similar services?

7. Do you know your rights to your domain name?

8. Which functions (copy writing, graphic design, html² editing, etc.) will be performed in-house?

9. What kinds of development or technical and creative work will go to outside specialists?

10. Which department or manager should have the overall management authority for the site’s content (i.e. marketing, public relations, advertising, sales, member/customer relations, etc.)? It is very important to tie this down early, especially in large organizations.

11. Who has authority to schedule to add, delete, or change material on the Web site? Is there a central authority? Does the Web manager take direction from several managers?

12. Does your cost analysis include planning, development, writing, graphic design, html editing,² and file transfers in addition to Web hosting? Hosting is usually the least costly element in maintaining a Web site. It is insignificant when compared with writing, design, and html editing.

13. Have you worked out a schedule to bring your Web site online? Are all parties in the plan aware of their responsibilities and deadlines?

14. Have you developed a procedure for updating or adding fresh material or news to your Web site?

15. Have you established a schedule to review your Web site for?

a. appropriateness of content,
b. organization,
c. frequency of updates,
d. design,
e. ease of navigation and
f. speed of downloading

16. Have you developed tests and defined benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of the Web site?

17. Have you developed a list of links to other appropriate Web sites and a schedule for checking their validity?

18. Search engines review a tiny fraction of the innumerable sites on the Internet. Have you developed a plan for promoting your Web site?

1. Paul Clark Landmann is co-author of Website Planning and Design Workbook, A Manager’s Guide (Madison: Assets Protection Publishing, 1998; ISBN: 0-933708-12-2). A professional communicator for over 40 years, he has been designing, writing, and developing Web sites since 1996. Back to top.

2. HyperText Markup Language is the coding structure that makes the Web work. Although it is not overly complicated, most Web designers use editing programs such as GoLive or FrontPage to lay out their pages. Knowledgeable designers, however, tweak the code and sometimes write longer sections of code because even the best editing programs are insufficiently versatile. The source code for html documents can be viewed from Netscape or Internet Explorer browsers. Click “view” or the right mouse button. Many designers incorporate JavaScript or Java (two separate, versatile languages) into their html documents as well. Back to text.

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