The first step in building your website is careful planning. Your website needs to have the right layout, look and features to achieve your business goals. If you're hiring a professional designer to build your site, your website plan will serve as a guide and avoid wasted efforts (and money!). Even if you're building your site yourself, you still need a plan to work from. Think it over carefully and be as specific as possible. The more completely you can describe what you want, the more likely you are to get it.

Clarify your goals.  What is your reason for creating a website, and what specifically do you want your website to do? What role will your website play in the daily operation of your business? How does your website fit into your marketing plan? You might be building a website to establish your brand, enhance your credibility, sell around the clock, save on operating expenses, tap into foreign markets, or improve your customer service. Clarifying your goals will help you stay focused on building the right website for your business. When you're faced with making tradeoffs, stay focused on your goals to help you make the right decision.

Cater to your audience.  Who are you creating the website for? What are the characteristics of your target audience? Are they technically savvy or Internet newbies? How fast are their computers and Internet access likely to be? Don't fall into the trap of telling people what you want to tell them rather than what they want to hear. Put your ego aside and think about it from your site visitors' perspective. Why would they visit your website, and what are they hoping to find once they get there? Make sure they'll find what they came for.

Define the "look and feel".  Before you decide on a look and feel for your own site, check out what other webmasters have done. Take lots of notes about layout, color schemes, navigation, writing style, and use of graphics and animation. What works and what doesn't? Bookmark the sites you like for future reference. Check out your competitors' sites, but also look at sites outside your own industry. Do choose a style for your site that's appropriate for your type of business and your target market, but don't be afraid to do something different. Having a distinctive website is a great way to set your business apart.

Think about navigation.  Anticipating how your visitors will travel through your site is critical to building a successful website. Most will arrive via your home page, but where should they go from there? If they enter via a page other than your home page, can they easily access the rest of your site? If your site is relatively large, related Web pages should be grouped into sections and products should be grouped into categories for the convenience of shoppers. A site map is a good idea for any but the smallest websites, and a site search feature is a must for larger ones.

Consider advanced features.  Advanced features are those that go beyond plain old HTML coding: JavaScript "rollovers", CGI scripts, online catalogs, shopping carts, site search capability, database connectivity, dynamic pages generated by server-side scripts, streaming media, etc. Higher level programming skills are required to add advance features so they'll add to the total cost of your website, so don't use them just because they're cool. Only add features if they are necessary to accomplish your goals and they truly add value for your visitors.

Content is king.  Let's face it, people don't surf over to your site to admire the cool design. Sure, they'll be impressed by an attractive and professional-looking site, but what they're really after is information. The search for content brings new visitors to your site and gives them a reason to come back again. Do give your visitors information about your products or services, but go beyond the "sales pitch" by providing help and advice, industry news, online tools, useful resources and solutions to their most annoying problems. Original content that is unique to your site is best, but you can also use content developed by other authors (with their permission, of course). Lots of relevant content will make your site visitors happy they found you, and search engines like it too.

Don't overlook usability.  Think about your website from the visitors' standpoint and make it as easy as possible for them to find what they're looking for. Try to keep the user interface as simple as possible. If you have advanced features like forms or site search capabilities, make sure you provide instructions that are easy to understand. Remember, not everyone will be viewing your site with the latest browsers, so make sure everything works in older browsers, too. If you're trying to attract a global customers, you'll want to translate some or all of your site into their native language.

Pay attention to compatibility.  Not all of your site visitors will be browsing with recent versions of Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, and some may be using text-based browsers like Lynx. Unless you're confident that all of your site visitors will be using cutting edge technology, you'll need to consider whether your site will display in an acceptable way for users of older and alternative browsers. Those people may represent a small percentage of viewers, but are you really willing to lose even 5% of potential sale? In addition to browser issues, your viewers may have graphics, JavaScript, or cookies turned off in their browser, so either don't rely too heavily on these capabilities or offer other alternatives.

Allow for ad space.  In designing your site, don't forget to allocate space for promotional messages. If you plan to sell ad space on your website or include banner ads or affiliate links, your design and layout should accommodate them. Also you may want to place signup boxes for your ezine or newsletter on every page, or leave space to display testimonials about your own products or services. You'll also need a script to handle content that rotates or changes periodically.

Optimize for search engines. Consider how search engines will view your site. Good design, organization and highly relevant content will help increase your search engine rankings - and that will bring more visitors to your site. Create a list of keywords and keyword phrases that Web searchers might use when searching for a site like yours, identify the most promising for your particular business, and then keep your content as relevant as possible to those terms. Make sure all of your important content can be accessed by search engines spiders.

Don't forget updates and maintenance.  Will your website need periodic changes to add new products, update time-sensitive information, add archived copies of your ezine, etc.? Designing your site with maintenance in mind will make it much easier to update later. Try to concentrate content that will need updating on one or two pages rather than having it scattered throughout your site. Decide whether you or your Web designer will make the changes. Your Web designer may be able to create a web-based control panel for you to use, or consider a Content Management System (CMS) if you must add or rotate a significant amount of content.

Develop a budget.  Once you know your requirements you can budget for the costs involved in creating the website you envision. Depending on your needs, you might need the services of a Web Designer, graphic designer, programmer, photographer, copywriter, and/or specialist in search engine optimization. If you're building all or part of your website yourself, include any Web authoring or graphics software you'll need to purchase. Also nclude any royalties for stock photos or clipart, the price of scripts or components, and hosting fees in your budget.

Be prepared to make tradeoffs.  If you find yourself suffering from sticker shock after you tally up all the costs, it's time to think about ways to cut costs. You may decide to do the writing or some of the HTML coding yourself after hiring a pro to create a template for you, or wait till later to add the advanced features. A small but professional-looking website is better than a large amateurish one, so focus on the content and features which add the most value for your visitors and facilitate the sales process.