Planning

What do you want the Website to Do?

This is a question that most people never seem to ask themselves.

As basic as it seems it will make a big difference to how you proceed with the project.

So before you begin you should ask yourself these basic questions:

• Do I just need an online brochure?
• Do I want the site to attract new customers?
• Will I be selling products on the site?
• Do I need to do frequent updates?

Once you have a general idea of what you want from your website you can then move on to the second stage of deciding who will be doing what.

Building it Yourself or Outsourcing?

As with any project you can either: Do it yourself or have someone do it for you or a mixture of the two.

Doing it yourself is obviously cheaper but can be very frustrating. The more technically capable you are and the more time you can devote then the more you can do yourself.

Outsourcing is a good option if you are:

• Not technically minded.
• Do not have much spare time.
• Want something that is obviously professionally done.

Read the rest of the articles in this section and then decide if you want to go it alone or have someone develop and build the site for you.

The important thing is to think about all options before deciding.

Building a website from scratch is very time consuming but ultimately very rewarding.