Planning

Planning is an essential part of creating a website. Learning to plan effectively usually comes with experience, as it is often our mistakes that teach us to plan better. It is crucial to consider who your target audience is. Your plan should also include not just how to get the site up and running, but also how to keep it up-to-date. Websites are a high profile extension of a business. The content of a website, created by its design, text, images, and interactivity, must keep up with the changes in business and industry. This usually means regular revisits to a website, to edit content, redesign, or upgrade. The web is a dynamic media that requires constant change.

This is a cooperative effort between you and the client. Nonetheless, this is not something that should be done for free. Initially, it is better to charge an hourly rate to put together a web design proposal or spec (specification). Once you gain more experience, you can switch to a flat rate. Some web designers will refund the cost of creating the spec if the client agrees to have the site developed.

Goal Definition. The first part of the planning state is goal definition. A web site is much more than just a collection of web pages put together with links. A web site must have a clearly definable purpose. In order to achieve that purpose, the first thing you must do as a web designer is to define your goals.
Research. The next stage is research. It is crucial to consider who your target audience is. In addition, you must understand your client's wants, needs, and taste. Without knowing your audience, the greatest designs in the world or the most innovative programming on the planet are worthless if they are designed for the wrong audience.
Hosting. The site must also be published from a web server. So the next bit of research you need to do is finding the right Web Hosting. Important considerations when looking for hosting are infrastructure, security, the network, services and price. If you plan on developing web sites for a living you may want to look into hosting that will allow you to run test sites while you are developing sites for your clients.
Draft the Proposal. The proposal is sometimes called a specification or spec. For the purposes of this class, we will call it your "Project Proposal."