What to plan for
Although our goal is to provide a single, comprehensive guide to help you in setting up your first website, we realize that every person and their website will be different. Even so, we still want to give you a brief overview of many different areas to think about before starting your first website, regardless of what it will be designed to do. We'll try not to bore you here, but we think it's important enough to provide some beforehand information to help you avoid common pitfalls & frustrations down the road. Many of these issues are covered in more detail in other areas of our site.
As in a lot of new undertakings, setting up a website can be time consuming, require some financial investment, and obviously be a learning experience. Planning ahead of time exactly what you want your site to do, your time limitations, financial concerns, and many other areas should be considered before getting started.
Depending on the site you want, the design you want, what the site will be designed to do, and whether you will do it yourself or use another method to build it, your time commitments and financial starting costs will vary. Building your own site will more than likely take less money and more of your time, while outsourcing it will cost more financially yet not require as much hands on involvement by you. It is important to plan and budget for these ahead of time; by accurately knowing what you can and are willing to do, you'll have a clearer idea of what your options are, not only to start your site but to keep it up and running. We suggest reading our overview covering the 5 ways to build your website to help you determine this part of your building involvement.
Often while in the building process, you may decide to make changes, either to your sites layout, content, user interaction, or any of a number of other areas. This will usually involve additional time, and if you are using a professional developer, may add to the overall cost. Even when your site is finished, there is a good chance that you will need to spend some time on it, for example monitoring members, adding items you are selling, etc. You may also need to work on marketing your website, that is, promoting it to draw more visitors. The overall idea is that, while your site is being developed, and even when your site is finished and online, there will still be much for you to do, so you need to keep in mind the that your time involvement may still be required.
If you are selling items through ecommerce, hopefully your sales will increase to a wider geographical area. If you are used to using a brick and mortar set up, you will need to research ecommerce techniques, select shipping options, even develop an online return policy; sales through the internet have their own aspects that you may not have had to think of before, so be sure to understand everything that will be involved beforehand.
One thing that new site owners need to understand is that, as well as they understand their own site, new visitors will have no idea what your site is when they first arrive. The basic rule is that you have 5 seconds to get the attention, interest, and "I get it!" reaction from new visitors, and if your site fails to do this consistently, then it will not be effective. You should often try to see your site as if you're looking at it for the first time, so that you can be sure it draws the new visitors in and keeps them interested. If that isn't happening, then you may need to look at making changes within your website. This is not uncommon, and may be something that will be needed, so always plan on making some type of changes as you go.