Use this worksheet in conjunction with the Design Plan Page to produce a clear picture of the steps you'll need to take to produce your most successful site.   Print the PDF Work Sheet

Step One: Define Your Target Audience

Who are they & What do they want from your site?
Define the business goal for your user's tasks, and prioritize them sequentially.

From 1 to 10 - What do you want the site to accomplish?
Give a numeric value to each activity, add you own if its not here -

Web Activity — Value   Read content —  Buy your products online —  Look up information —  Register as a member —  Use your links —   Find maps and addresses — — — — — — —

Create personas for each of the different types of people who use your site and profile your users.

—User —Profile —1 — ex. just looking, or shopping around —2 — —3 — —4 —

Step Two: Site Content and Functionality

Build a table with each business goal from the top table and assign a user goal the content and functionality that will support it and the scenario of its use.

Business Goal: — — User Goal: — — Site Content: — — Functionality: — — Scenarios: — —

Step Three: Site Design

On several sheets of paper, create sketches of what you'd like your screens to look like. Gather the images you'd like to use, define the colors and the fonts to support the design you're looking for.Use our Design Layout Plan (PDF) to help you with this.

Step Four: Site Structure

Here's where you develop the:

Navigation Map & Site Architecture - Draw out how you want your visitors to navigate your site. Will some pages be of primary importance and others secondary? Content Development - Advertising vs. technical. Do you want to sell a feeling or a fact? Lots of words or lots of images? Site Map Page - Decide on how to display the layout information. Smaller sites don't need this web page, complicated sites can't do without it. Meta Information and SEO - Gather as many descriptive words and phrases as possible that folks might use to search for your website. Use our SEO Sheet (PDF) to help you with this.

Step Five: Compilation and Testing

   and test —and test —and test

Test against each of the profiles you've developed, check for spelling, check for consistency, check and recheck every aspect of the site. Get employees to look through it for errors and omissions, employ friends and family in this too - there are never enough eyes to check your site before it goes public.

     Now You're Ready to Post Your Completed Site to the Web!