I need to know what you hope to accomplish with your website – are you selling a product or service? Are you sharing information? Are you trying to collect information? Do you want to blog? Are you hoping that blog will provide an income? 

 

I also need to know who you are trying to reach – who do you want to buy your products or services?  Who do you want to share information with? Who are you hoping will read your blog? How old are these people? What is their income? What are their lives like? Are you trying to reach local people or people all over the country or even all over the world?

 

Another important thing I need to know is who is your competition? Are they local or worldwide or something more in between? Is there a particular competitor that you really want to blow out of the water?? I ask for links to your competitions’ websites so I can see what THEY are doing – how their website works for them. My training helps me to do a little detective work and figure out their strengths as well as their weaknesses. With this information, I can not only design and build a website that will be highly competitive, but I can also help you develop an internet marketing plan.

 

Getting into the visual design elements, I ask for links to three websites you like as well as three websites you don’t like. I also ask what it is you do and don’t like about these sites. These sites can be of any type, any subject matter  - sometimes clients choose sites that  have something to do with their line of work (and the subject of their new or redesigned website), other times they have nothing to do with their line of work. Either is fine. A lot of times, the client isn’t quite sure exactly WHAT it is they like or dislike about a site they choose, but when I have three sites to look at in each category (like and dislike), I can usually figure it out. Remember the game “Which One of These Things is Not Like the Others” on Sesame Street? I play a game similar to that with these website selections – but instead, I look for what they have in common. And this is where my training in screen design really helps out!

 

Here’s what I do with that information. This helps me to understand what YOU personally like to see when you visit websites. Now, you need to understand that while YOU may like to see certain colors or features when you visit websites, they may not be appropriate for the type of site that YOU need for YOUR BUSINESS. But I also realize that YOU are paying for your design and development so obviously, you are going to have to like what you see when you visit your own site. If I can get a good idea of the things you like personally, I can take that information and those design elements and transform them into something that WILL work for your site and reach your target audience. It won’t look just like your favorite site (and it shouldn’t or we could both get sued for copyright infringement!), but it will have the elements that you personally like to see AND it will be designed with your target audience, purpose, and desired outcome in mind.