site planning

 Before you meet with us, it is a good idea to write down all of your ideas. Let's discuss them in great detail. We can even give you ideas on how to make it more productive.

 It's simplest to think of site design as having three parts.

Organization ~~~ Content ~~~ Appearance

 Your site's organization is important because it can make it easier (or more difficult) for your visitors to find what they're looking for (or what you want them to see).

 A common mistake is for people to know what they want the site to do for them, but not for their site visitors. Then you end up with a site that makes you happy, but no one else on the planet gives a hoot about it. Sites like this are useless unless just making yourself happy is enough, and hey, who's to say that isn't enough? But if your site is for a company or group, and you need it to actually do something, then you must figure out what you want it to do, for you, and for your site visitors.

 Once you know what you want your site to accomplish, it's simple to start to create an organization for your site that helps you accomplish that goal.

 Navigation is such an important part of any good Web site that you need to think about it from the start. Your site visitors need to know how to get to the information they're looking for—and how to get from one part of your site to another.

 Your home page must link to all your sections (and perhaps directly to some featured articles), and every page on your site should have navigation buttons that let your visitor get to your home page, or any main section page.

 Navigation should be consistent from page to page, so your visitors don't have to figure out how to get places every time they encounter a new page.

 Creating effective content (meaning text, graphics, and other information) for your site requires that you've already figured out the purpose of your site, and perhaps even the organization of your site.

 Organization can help you refine your focus and create content that's more useful for your purpose, and the purposes of your site visitors.

 Some basics to remember: Visitors should know where they are at all times—the name of the site, the name of the area within that site. Otherwise they can suffer from a form of cybersickness known as Hypernausea, and never want to return to your site (or never be able to find the information they once found "I know I saw that here, somewhere...").

 Make sure to include an easy way for your visitors to contact you! Feedback is a vital part of the Internet experience so make sure to include links that allow visitors to easily e-mail you—plus your traditional address and/or phone number. Don't forget to include your normal contact information, phone, fax, and address, yes, on every single page. That way if someone saves or prints a page, they still have that important info.