What to consider when building a new website

What do you need to consider when building a new website? Here’s a few points to consider:

• Have you a name for the business? Usually new startup’s already have their business name set in stone.
• Domain name – Once the business has a name, is the domain name available for the website? Have a search using any domain name registrar. www.123reg.co.uk is as good as any other provider to search for domain names. But I probably wouldn’t use them to host your website or email service. It might be cheaper than others out there, but their customer service isn’t that great! I’d use a smaller service provider. If you would like any recommendations, then get in touch.
• What colours are you going to use? I would recommend using the same colours through out the whole business. Keep the same colours for your logo, business cards, stationary, website and merchandise. This way, customers will recognise you and your brand instantly without having to think about it. I’d also limit the number of colours to use.
• Make a list of all the information you would like to include on the website for visitors to find. Then group this information into web pages. Having too many web pages with little bits of information on them is harder to find than a longer ‘About Us’ page. If you provide many services, have one core service page then use a clear navigation to show secondary services page information.
• Take a look at your competitors. What information are they displaying? How are they displaying the information? What colour schemes are they using? Do you like how and what they are doing? What would you layout your website that’s better than your competitor? What don’t you like about your competitors websites?
• Take a look at other random websites out there. I guess that there must be millions of websites to look at. Make a list of website designs you like. Also make a list of websites you don’t like. These lists are very helpful to a web designer. Some websites are very dull and boring, others are too busy and you can’t find anything.