Website Planning Worksheet

Organization Name: __________________________

1. Purpose

Give the most important purpose a "1", next most important a "2" and so on... Leave those blank which do not interest you at all.
__ Personal with biographic data, often called "vanity pages"
__ Promotional to sell a product
__ "Current" to provide extremely up-to-date information, as for newspapers' sites
__ Informational to share information on a particular topic or hobby
__ Advocacy/persuasive as propaganda to convert you to particular point of view
__ Instructional to teach a unit or course of study;
__ Registrational to register for courses, information, and/or products, accumulate a database of, and simplify communication with, registrants
__ Entertainment!
__ Other _______________________________________________________

2. Site Organization

Please label pages you desire.

Total number of pages decided upon ________________

3. Site and Domain Names

Site Name on Banner: ____________________________________

Domain Name It must be registered through your web hosting service and approved by a domain registration service before you can use it. You may check the availability of your domain name at Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com)

Domain name ____________________________ ___Desired ___Already Registered

4. Banner Graphic

Do you have a copy of your company's letterhead, brochures, catalog, etc. so we can see how you present your company image.
__ Have Company Logo incorporated in the banner graphic.
__ Have Photo or drawing that will be used for banner graphic.

Typeface preference _________________________________________

Preferred colors in palette _______________________________________

Other ideas _________________________________________________________

5. Navigation System

Select those you will incorporate in your site.

_ Text Links from the front page and sectional pages to every page in the system to enable Web search engines to "spider" and index content on every page.

_Left-Side Menus

_Top Menus

_Right-Side Menus

_ Text Menu Buttons (rollovers)

_ Graphics Menu Buttons (rollovers)

7. Basic Page Elements

These are the important items which appear on nearly every webpage on your site (except the "home" page).

Page titles which show at top of Web browser only
Top-of-page graphic based on the design of the banner graphic
Page Title in larger type. Heading Font Style: ________________
Text. Body Font Style: ___________________
E-mail response link to the following e-mail address: _________________________
Copyright and trademark information in small print at the bottom of every page. What registered trademarks, trademarks, and service marks does your company want to indicate here?

8. Photos, Graphics, Animations, Sound, and Video

You must own the copyright to, or have permission from the copyright owner to use any photos or graphics you use on your site.

Which of the following do you intend to add to your site?

_Clipart
_Photos
_Stock photos
_Sound
_Animated GIF images
_Flash
_Video clips

9. Response Forms

What is the purpose of your response form?

__ Guestbook for visitors to record comments
__ Request for information
__ Survey of customer preferences

10. Web Hosting Service

You final website must be posted with a hosting service. You do not need to get this service until the last couple weeks of class. However, you should research and know who that will be now.

Web Hosting Service _____________________________________

Phone: _____________________________

E-mail for support or help ______________________________

11. Registering and Advertising Your Website

Be sure to read the article, "Web Marketing Checklist: 27 Ways to Promote Your Website" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm). Consider:

Advertising your Website to Web search engines that index the Web
Giving customers a good reason to come by offering them something
Finding industry-wide linking pages and negotiating reciprocal links to and from their webpages.
Purchasing Web advertising
Becoming active in several of the thousands of Internet news groups and mailing lists
Developing a "signature" mini-ad attached to all your e-mail messages
Making your website part of one or more of the many "malls."
Including your e-mail and Web addresses on all your company's print literature, stationery, and display advertising
E-mail newsletters

Information about number of visitors to your website can usually be obtained from your Internet Service Provider, from statistics generated daily by such programs as WWWSTAT, GETSTATS, or Analog on the host computer. We do not include page counters on our Standard Website Packages

You should submit your information to Web search engines to "register" your website after it is finished. Before doing this you should get 50 to 100 keywords and a carefully constructed 25-word sentence contain the most important keywords.