GETTING STARTED> Purpose : Audience : Content : Image : Planning

Getting Started

Before you start building a site, you need a really clear idea in your head of the following:

Purpose - What do you want it for?
Audience - Who do you want it for?
Content - What should be on it?
Image - How do you want to appear?

Before you set finger to keyboard, answer all of these questions. Then using the super high-tech equipment of a pencil and the back-of-an-envelope (or a beer coaster, with input from your inebrietated friends), you have to do some planning.

So many disastrous sites are the result of poor planning. If you just start building a site without knowing what you want it to be when you finish, I guarantee it will be a nightmare - both to make, and to use. So please... take the time to plan it properly. Spend time surfing sites of a similar purpose until you have a clear picture of what you want YOUR site to be.

Nothing's really original. "Steal from one source, it's plagiarism, steal from many and it's research". As I've said earlier, you should respect the copyright of others - but when it comes to things like functionality, navigation and general design ideas, ones that work well are universal.

Hunt around for sites in your Industry anywhere in the world. If there are other organisations doing the same thing that you do, then the chances are that there are already some excellent sites out there. I'm not saying you should totally copy someone else's design, but using other sites as a basic framework for your own is far more efficient that starting from scratch. You can get as creative as you like with the "look", but with functionality don't try to be original. What you're after is to make it EASY for readers to get around your site, and the more familiar and intuitive the basic navigation, the better.