This Website planning checklist is useful for two reasons, firstly to get you thinking about the requirements and goals you want and need your website to achieve, secondly the information provided will help prepare a more accurate brief and final solution.
Some questions may not be relevant to your situation and it’s not important to answer them all but do your best as you will help identify where you currently stand and where you want to be.
Download the word version here
Checklist questions
01. Contact Details
02. Domain name & Website Hosting
03. Company Profile
04. Target Market
05. Perception
06. Marketing
07. Branding
08. Action
09. Website structure and content
10. Legal
11. Updating your website
12. Go live requirements
13. Budget
14. Other functionality
15. Additional notes
Name:
Company name:
Company address:
Phone:
Mobile phone:
Email address:
Domain name / URL:
Are you the project contact person?
Are there other project contacts? Please list relevant details:
Preferred method of contact:
Domain Name:
Do you have a preference where your site will be hosted?
Please provide your current Internet service provider (ISP) details:
FTP Address:
FTP User Name/Login:
FTP Password:
Briefly describe your products or services:
Why do your customers choose you?
How is your business different itself from your competitors?
What keywords would someone type into a search engine to find you?
Who is your primary target audience?
What is their median age?
Keep in mind that the age group you are targeting can greatly affect the design of a website:
What do you believe will offer the most value to the users of your site?
Please provide additional comments below about your target markets:
How do you want your site to be perceived by a user?
What are the biggest challenges in making this happen?
List your favorite websites
What makes these stand out for you?
List your competitor’s websites
What do you like or don’t like about them?
What IMAGE do you want to project?
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Design Style: |
Impression: |
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What are your short term and long term marketing goals?
What are your current marketing challenges?
How will people know about your site?
A website is a top priority for any marketing campaign as is making people aware of it, do you have a strategy planned to promote your site to your target audience and if so, how?
Do you have a tagline? If yes please list below
Do you have corporate colours? If yes please list below
Do you have corporate fonts? If yes please list below
What fonts do you prefer to use?
Do you have current marketing and branding materials you wish to use?
Such as text / copy, images / photos, audio, video, etc…
Will you require externally sourced photos for use on the web site?
From your websites homepage, what are the main actions you’d like the users to perform?
Go somewhere, view specific information, make contact with you, sign up for something, download or buy something?
Is there anything you need on every page?
Websites should have standard items available on every page such as navigation (links / menus), is there anything else you need on every page, such as contact details, phone number, search, disclaimer?
What is the proposed structure of your website?
Think of a website as a directory in which you store your important information, if you asked someone to find a certain piece of information (someone new to your business), what would be the easiest and quickest path for them to find it?
Your website needs a logical structure for the user to get to the information they need as easily and quickly as they can, this is important to a websites success, I can provide assistance with this but keep in mind the business owner generally knows their business, content and customers better than anyone.
Website navigation categories
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List other pages here:
Can you arrange the proposed structure into a sitemap like the following?
This is an example site map
- Home
- About
- Who we are
- Awards
- Working with us
- Services
- Web design
- Web development
- Multimedia
- Video production
- Animation
- Products
- Widget 01
- Widget 02
- Widget 03
- Contact
Who will be responsible for providing this information?
Are there any legal requirements?
Disclaimers, copyrights, trademarks etc…?
Are there any cultural considerations we should be aware of when designing the site?
Are there internal business factors politics we need to consider with the project?
An important requirement of most website’s is keeping your content up to date and accurate, the easiest way to enable this is by using a content management system (CMS) which provides an online administration section of the website, this can add a small additional cost in the short term however the convenience and cost saving’s in the long term generally prove to be a major cost and image saver.
Do you currently have a CMS you wish us to work with?
Will you require a CMS?
Who will be responsible for editing and using the CMS?
Will training be needed?
What is your proposed launch date, when do you need the new site to be live?
Are there any reasons this could be affected?
What is your budget?
Can this be split into a phased approach to help achieve your goals?
Are there specific functions your site needs to perform?
- E-commerce
- Ad Management
- Links Management
- Newsletter Management
- Downloads Management
- Calendar / Schedule
- Classified Ads
- Image / Photo Gallery
- Discussion Forums
- Blog
- Messaging and Chat
- Surveys / Polls
- Article / News Management
- User Management
- File Management / Uploading
Any other additional details / comments about your project:
