PART-II: Overview

What is the purpose of the site?
Decide which of the following you wish to do - a good site will be clear in its purpose so choose only the relevant ones.
Serve the needs of existing clients
Explain your products and services
Bring in new clients to your business
Take online orders
Provide information for your staff
Other

Who do you want to visit your site?

Who is the primary audience your site is aimed at?

Who might be looking for your site/services/products?

Who might be interested if they reach your site accidentally?

What will you offer on your site?
Company Information
Details of your services
Product Listings
Online ordering
Online support for existing customers
Discussion/bulletin boards
Applications chat/interactive support
Extensive Links

How do you plan to bring visitors back to your site?

What will be useful enough to lure them back?

What fresh content/regular news are you likely to have?

How do you plan to market the site to bring in visitors in the first place?
Submissions to: Search Engines, Directories, Industry-Specific Directories
Reciprocal Linking with Others
Link exchange/banner ads
Paid banner ads
Paid preferential search engine listings
Internet Press Releases
Marketing in Newsgroups/via E mail
Business cards, Letterheads etc
Offline media advertising
Mail shots, Flyers
Information at your place of business

How would you define success for this site?

PART-III: Design and Development

What will you call the site?

Do you have an existing domain name?
Yes No

Is your business name available as a domain name?
Yes No

If not are you able to come up with a good alternative?
Yes No

Are you planning on a .com, .net, .org or .ie name? Or another suffix or number of those?

What will your visitors look for?

What keywords or phrases do you think clients, and potential clients, might use to find your site? (List as many as you can think of)

How do you want your site to look?

Do you have a preference for colors?

Do you have existing artwork? e.g. logos, photos, items used in brochures etc.
Yes No

Will you need new graphics created? What sort?

List 3 or 4 sites you like and say why you like them
1.
2.
3.
4.

List 3 or 4 sites you do not like and say what you dislike about them
1.
2.
3.
4.

Rate the sites of 3 businesses similar to yours - stating clearly what you like and dislike about them. What sort of text content are you planning?

Will you need mainly short pages or do you have a large body of text based information to impart?

Will you need audio?
Yes No

Will you need video?
Yes No

Will you need a form or forms?
Yes No

Just a contact form
Extensive forms on many subjects
Specialized forms such as assessment/application forms
Forms which are used to transmit secure information
E-mail Auto responders

PART-IV: Site Hosting

How are you planning to host your site?
Hosted on another site? (www.kilkennysites.com/yoursite)
Hosted with an ISP without a Domain Name? (www.eircom.net/yoursite)
Purchasing a Domain Name? (www.yoursite.ie)
Hosting by the same ISP where you have a dial-up connection
Hosting by a specialist hosting company.
Don't know yet
Do you need several/many different e-mail addresses? e.g. theboss@yoursite.com, info@yoursite.com

PART-V: Building the Site

Do you prefer that this site be developed inhouse?
Yes No

If this site is built inhouse, what amount of training and/or time away from others duties would this person (or these people) require initially?

If this person runs into difficulties is their someone you can call on for assistance?

Who will be responsible for gathering information and getting it to the developer?

Consider getting a team together specifically for this purpose, Appoint ONE person to liaise between
the team and the developer.
Who will review ongoing progress on the site as it is developed and have the authority to approve it?

Who will sign off on the completed project?

PART-VI: Maintenance and Updating

How often will the site need to be updated?

Will some sections need more regular updating?
Yes No

Do you want to add syndicated content which automatically updates?
Yes No

How do you plan to update content?

Do you need forms/templates to allow individual sections to be maintained/updated?
Yes No

Do you need a backend for easy updating with little technical knowledge?
Yes No

Are you planning to update the site using proprietary software - such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver?
Yes No

Will training be required in the use of this software?
Yes No

Will updating be done in house or via a maintenance contract?
Yes No

What about background maintenance tasks?
Regular checking of internal and external links
Search Engine status and resubmissions
Checking the competition?
Overseeing content sourcing, editing and approval

PART-VII: Cost

Initial Costs
Design and Development
Domain registration
Hosting set up
On Going Costs
Maintenance and updating
Hosting
Additional development costs if adding to site