PURPOSE Why do you want a Web site? What do you expect to accomplish?

1. Objectives of the site:
   Primarily, we want our site to do the following:
   __ Serve the needs of current and future clients
   __ Explain our products and services
   __ Bring in new clients or customers to our location
   __ Take orders online
   __ (Add your own....)
   
   Secondarily, we want our site to do the following:
   __Serve the needs of current and future clients
   __ Explain our products and services
   __ Bring in new clients or customers to our location
   __ Take orders online
   __ (Add your own....)
   
   
2. Who is our target audience? Who will be looking for our site? Who will become interested if they reach our site accidentally?
   
   
3. What will we offer on our site? (Please state these generally. You'll be more comprehensive later.)
   Company Information...explanation of our services...products...online ordering...links to other sites......
   
   
4. What will get them to return to our site?
   
   
5. How do we plan to promote/market the site to bring customers and clients?
   
   Submissions to:
   __ Major Search Engines
   __ Major Directories
   __ Multiples of Search Engines
   __ Industry-Specific Directories
   __ General Directories Reciprocal Linking with Others
   
   Internet Press Releases
   Marketing in Newsgroups
   Traditional Means:
   __ Business cards...
   __ Letterhead
   __ Newspaper and magazine
   __ Flyers
   __ Information at our place of business...
   
   
6. How will we know if our site is successful? How will we measure success?
   
   

SITE INFORMATION How will you construct your site?

1. What will we call the site?
   
   
2. What will be the URL name.
   
   
3. What keywords will clients use to find us? What keyword phrases will drive the most traffic? (List as many as you can, then number them in highest probability to lowest.)
   
   
4. In a 20-25 word sentence, how do we describe our site, incorporating the most relevant keywords from #2 & #3..
   
   
5. What look or appearance do we want?
   
   
   • Background color or texture?
     
   • Basic color scheme?
     
   • Graphics (Flash, Clip art, scanned-in graphics or photos, scanned photo with type superimposed, customized type font, created graphic, customized computer art)
     > Masthead/main graphic?
     > Navigation: text or graphic?
     > Graphic accents throughout?
     > Animated graphics?
     > Java graphics?
     
     
6. What structure will we use? Long or multiple short pages? Amount of text on each page?
   __Type of navigation?
   __ Long or multiple short pages?
   __Amount of text on pages?
   __Use of frames, flash, database driven, static HTML pages?
   
   
7. Sound?
   
   
8. Video?
   
   
9. Multimedia?
   
   
10. Do we want to provide special means of communication?
    __Just e-mail form
    __ More extensive form
    __ E-mail Autoresponder
    __ Chat Line
    __ Message Boards
    __ Guestbook
    __ Newsletter
    __ List Serve
    
    
11. Areas of Content.

HOSTING What are your hosting needs?

1. Will we maintain our own server?
   
   
2. Where will we host our site if it's not our own server?
   
   
3. Do we need or plan to add additional functionality to our site in the future where we need to consider whether the hosting company has the appropriate tools?
   __ Cgi bin
   __ Perl Scripts
   __ SSI & Online Sales Functions.
   __ Cloaking Software
   __ Other...
   
   
4. Do we want several different e-mail addresses?
   
   
5. Do we plan to outsource our Web site marketing and optimization so we'll need the oursourced company to have access to the server to put up files.
   
   
6. What statistics programs are available for our site with the hosting company? Web Trends?
   
   

DEVELOPMENT OF SITE CONTENT Who will oversee the development of the site?

1. Who is responsible for gathering information and getting it to the developer?
   
   
2. Who will interface with the development team during development?
   
   
3. Who will preview and authorize acceptance of each phase of the development?
   
   
4. Who will sign off on the project?
   
   

UPDATING How will your site be maintained?

1. How often will it be updated? Which sections?
   
   
2. Who will do the updating? Do we want pages requiring updating to be done in a template so an office staff person can maintain the sections? Which sections?
   
   
3. Who will periodically check links, check competing sites to determine our competitive edge, check our status in the search engines?
   

CONCLUDING QUESTIONS

1. Do we want a strategy of high search engine ranking for findability?
   
   
2. Do we want a strategy that includes any of the following?
   __Submissions to major search engines?
   __Submissions to major directories?
   __Submissions to industry-specific directories or general directories
   __Reciprocal linking with other sites for traffic generation?
   __Reciprocal linking with other sites for generation of popularity?
   __Internet press releases?
   __Marketing in newsgroups
   __Email marketing campaigns?
   

COST What is our budget?

One approach to developing a budget is to go back over all the questions in the Worksheet and put costs to what you answered for your Web site wish list.

1. Initial expenditure.
   Development $_______
   Hosting $_______
   Promotion, Optimization, Search Engine Marketing $_______
   
   
   
2. Ongoing expense?
   Updates $_______
   Additional Development $_______
   Hosting $_______
   Promotion, Optimization, Search Engine Marketing $_______