Things to Know Before You Develop a Website
By Elba Shaw
Irrespective of the purpose of the website, there are a few things every developer needs
to do before creating a website. In this article, we are going to discuss these basic things
and some more that you can do to ensure building a really amazing and unique site.
Things to Consider Before Creating a Website
1. Domain Name: Your website's domain should:
• Perfectly match with the idea or the type of business you want to build
• Be a name that people can remember easily
• Be short and easy to type
• Include the target keywords
• Not have numbers and/or hyphens
• Have an appropriate domain extension, depending on your business type
• Be well-researched
2. Web Hosting
• Compare different hosting service providers and plans
• Choose a reliable hosting that perfectly suits your needs
• Check and compare the storage, bandwidth capacity and other features of the hosting
• Choose the hosting that comes with uptime guarantee
• Check and compare hosting prices, upgrade options and rates, etc.
• Read user reviews and testimonials
3. Web Technology: There are many technology options, such as HTML5, JavaScript, PHP, DotNet
and more, that you can choose from for developing your own site. You must have a strong command
over the technology or should be willing to hire a good web development company/developer for the job.
4. Purpose of the site: The purpose for which you are building the site would decide
a lot of things, including the website name, domain, design, layout, theme, content, etc.,
so you better figure it out the first thing.
5. Website Design/Theme/Layout: Choose a theme that you know your website visitors would
like. The layout should be simple, easy, neat and clean and easy to navigate. The website design
should be simple, attractive yet professional. Use the right fonts, colours, background colour,
font-size and other design elements. Make sure to include a footer with the right menus, disclaimer
and a good design.
6. Sitemap: Design a sitemap/flowchart of your website which should consist of all the
website URLs and/or pages in a neat manner to help users and search engines understand the
website navigation.
7. Website Content: The content is probably the most important part of a website. It
is the thing for which the users will actually visit your site, so try to make your website
content simple, attractive, informative, relevant, unique, easy to read, short and precise.
Make sure to include your business target keywords within the content as well as in the meta
tags of the web pages. Optimize the web content for image size, loading speed, layout, headings,
title, quality and more.
8. Audience: Research thoroughly to find out more about your target audience and understand
the competition in the target market so that you can write the content and build a website accordingly.
9. Website Images: use only high-quality and relevant images on the website. An image is the
second best content type after the text that you can use to attract more visitors and keep them
longer on your site. If you can afford, hire a professional image designer/editor/photographer for the job.
10. Uniqueness and Freshness: One thing that will decide how users react to your website
is how unique or different your site is from the competition. Use unique content, images and
even a unique website layout to build an authority in the market. There is no meaning of having
a website if you are going to provide the same content as everyone else. Also, make sure to
keep the website content up-to-date to keep your visitors hooked.
11. Target Browsers, Platforms and Devices: Before you start building your website, you
must know the target platforms on which your website will be working. A business website should
be built with cross-browser compatibility - to work great on all modern browsers and responsiveness
- to open properly on all screen sizes and resolutions.
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