Freelance Web Designer - Innovative Web Design
Los Angeles, California
Website Planning Worksheet
Here are a few things to consider when asking us to build your website. The questionnaire below is designed to enhance communications between Innovative Webdesign and our clients - YOU. Feel free to print this out or make some notes in regards to relevant items. We can then discuss those points when you're ready to have your site build.1. Purpose
A few important "target" items when building your website:
__ To sell products directly over the Internet via credit cards / Ebay / PayPal.__ To promote your products / services.
__ To develop a qualified list of prospective customers / clients.
__ To encourage potential customers to contact you by phone or email to initiate a sale.
__ To make available product information and price lists to customers / clients.
__ To add sound bites / video / Flash / Javascript / to enhance product presentation.
__ To add dynamic content / databases to the site i.e. PHP, MySQL, ASP, Coldfusion
__ To strengthen brand / product identification.
__ Other _______________________________________________________
2. Site Organization
The navigation bar(s) in a website are important. They are the portal to your website and pages. A clear and concise layout cannot be over-emphasized. Make sure the navigation layout is easy to understand, comprehensive and search engine friendly. Give some thought to what your nav buttons should say and what they should lead to. You can have the navigation bar at the top of the page, or the left / right side. And of course there should always be a second one at the bottom of each page. Below are some suggestions:
Total number of pages decided upon ________________
- Home
- About the Company
- What's New / Specials
- Products / Services
- FAQ / Newsletter
- Contact Info
- Order Information
- Testimonials
- Help / Tutorials
3. Site and Domain Names
Site Name on Masthead: ____________________________________
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 DirectNic
We do not work for directnic.com but have had great experiences with this registrar and so have our customers. We'll be glad to check into domain registration for you.Domain name ____________________________ ___Desired ___Already Registered
4. Banner / Top Page Graphics
A good stand-out logo is a company's calling card. So is a good slogan! We'll be glad to work with your existing art work and/or create some fabulous Photoshop/Flash/animated GIFs for you if desired. It would help to have samples of your company's letterhead, brochures, catalog, etc. so we can see how you present your company image.
__ Company Logo incorporated in the masthead graphic? If so, please enclose a color copy.
__ Photo or drawing of product(s)?
__ Typeface preference __________________________________________
__ Preferred colors in palette _______________________________________
__ Other ideas _________________________________________________________
5. Background Colors, Font Colors, Sitebar Colors and Accents
This is totally your preference. However, we do have some great suggestions and will work with you to make sure your website looks smashing. The text needs to be readable against the background and graphics and it all will looks great on various monitor sizes and resolutions. We come across so many sites (and we're sure you have too) where the color combinations are NOT working. The text is blurry and obscured by the dense background and the colors conflict. Not so with our designs. One tip here: it's a nice idea to include some color data from the company logo/banner into the general layout of the pages. That way there is a cohesive balance throuout the site.
6. Basic Page Elements
These are the important items which appear on nearly every webpage on a site:
- Page titles which show at top of Web browser only (very important search engine item!)
- Page description - a short desc. about your company and the present page (another very important search engine item!)
- Keywords as they pertain to your business and the present page
- Top-of-page graphic based on the design of the masthead graphic
- Navigation Bars either at the top, left or right side of the page and a second, smaller one at the very bottom of the page.
- Page Title in larger type. Heading Font Style: ________________
- Text. Body Font Style: ___________________
- Standard company ID near bottom of page
- Response link to a contact page which normally contains all the contact info.
- 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?
7. Photos, Graphics, Animations, Sound, and Video
Our contract includes a statement that you own the copyright to, or have permission from the copyright owner to use any photos or graphics you send us. And as mentioned above, we can certainly create all sorts of fabulous graphics for you and even shoot some photos if you have a need for that.
- Clipart can be fun if the right ones are found and used. They add an element of "playfullness" to a site. We have a huge selection, if you are interested in this.
- Photos and images can be sent via digital format, on CD, DVD, etc. If no digital image exists, we'll be glad to scan the photos and then return the originals.
- Sound, either MIDI musical background or Audio for music or voice. We can edit your audio and midi files for you, since we have a full fledged musical production studio. We can even create some amazing sound tracks for your site. Bear in mind that even today with highspeed, audio files can still take up a load of bandwidth. Judiciously used, audio and midi can greatly enhance the visitor's experience to your website!
- Animated GIF images. Still a good way to add "movement" to otherwise static sites without resorting to more involved Flash or Java items. We can create GIF animation from almost all images / objects. You can provide us with the raw data or we can create whatever it is you need.
- FLASH Animations - A great way to entice a visitor into a massive visual experience on a site. We'll be glad to concoct a fantastic Flash driven site for you. However, there are drawbacks to Flash. Granted, most web surfers have the Flash plugin installed and therefore are able to view the movies / pages. Flash is very search engine "unfriendly" which means, the SE's can't find anything to search on a Flash site. Because it's all contained in the Flash movie. You're getting my point? If YOUR site depends on being found on the WWW, I suggest you integrate Flash with real content. A lot of web designers don't tell you this because they like the money being made with Flash. We, at Innovative Webdesign, like to keep it real! So be web-smart: integrate Flash with text content.
- Video clips - we can incorporate video clips into your website. Compatible with most formats ie. mov, avi, mpeg. Either for download or streaming. Or link to some cool ones on YouTube.
- MySpace - if you have a page on myspace.com we can spiff it up for you. With a great background, layout, graphics, banners, buzzwords, you name it. A word about myspace: ANY company should have a myspace account these days, just for the publicity and visibility it creates. Who can argue with 190 Million people being on there. Unless you are a high profile bankers firm, lawers office or ultra conservative, go get a myspace account and have someone maintain it. We know of plenty of businessess which did that and have increased their sales by hundreds of percent. We'll be glad to start one for you, maintain it, connect to "Friends" style it etc.
8. Email Forms, Guestbooks, Order Forms, Surveys etc.
This is a most important point because it now connects you and the customer. Once someone finds your site, finds the products/services interesting and starts filling out a certain form, you've won a major WWW battle. You've made the website visitor react to your website. Depending on what your website is selling or offering, there are a vast array of input boxes / forms which we create to connect the visitor with the website owner. Some of the standard forms are:
- Email form - where the visitor can fill out a form and give some information about him/herself, the company, the reason why the email box is being filled out etc.
- Guestbook for visitors to record comments
- Order Form for Products/Services
- Surveys you want the visitors to take, where all the info is recorded into a database
- Search Form - if you have a large site you might want to consider your own search form so the visitors can find a specific item quickly on your site.
There are many variation on this theme. That's what makes a website "dynamic". Usually a server-side language is employed to handle the input for those forms. We specialize in PHP, ASP, MySQL and Access.
9. Web Hosting Service
We recommend to our clients web hosting services tailored to their specific needs. Which means.. do you need dynamic content? PHP enabled? Databases? Loads of storage space? Or just a nice and tidy site that's functional? Linux or Windows Servers? We've worked with dozens of hosting services -- not all are created equal! We'll be glad to set this up for you or we we will check out the hosting service of your choice to make sure it meets your WWW needs!.
10. Advertising Your Website and dealing with Search Engines
This is in the end what it all comes down to. You have a great site, your products are amazing... but... no one on the WWW knows you're there. You got your site up, but that does NOT mean the rest of the world knows about it. Okay.. they'll type in the name of your company (if they know it) and you'll pop up in Google or Yahoo, but that's the easy part.
The question is: how can your site come up in the major search engines if someone types in "keywords" that pertain to your business or services. Most people search that way for something. A service or product that is offered in a certain location with a certain name.
This is one of the reasons you've come us - Innovative Webdesign -. We totally understand this concept and design sites with the SEO in mind. Below are a few points but to this I'll add: good, error free coding (believe me, SE's do NOT like errors in webpages), links that work, buzz words all over the place, smart title and descriptions for each page and the listed items below:
- Advertising your Website to Web search engines that index the Web
- Finding industry-wide linking pages and negotiating reciprocal links to and from their webpages. (hugely important!)
- Giving customers a good reason to come by offering them something
- Purchasing Web advertising (within reason)
- 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
- Including your e-mail and Web addresses on all your company's print literature, stationery, and display advertising
- E-mail newsletters
11. Maintenance
Package prices include minor updating over the first six months of the contract. This covers minor price changes, product changes, etc. It does not include major changes, such as changing newsletter content (which essentially involves constructing a new webpage), which is billed at our hourly rate. But with everything we do: we'll work with you so you are a "happy WWW customer" and will recommend us to your fiends and fellow business partners.
FINAL POINTS
If you read through all or most of this, you should have a good understanding of what the basic premises are for a successful web presence. There is much more to it, but we'll cover all details in our personal exchange, should you decide to go with our company. And you SHOULD!contact us now and we'll discuss how we can make your web presence happen TODAY!