When you are thinking of publishing your own website you will reach to a certain point where you would agree to complete your home work from where you started. Most of the young talented beginners jumping into web design and development will probably consider choosing the most easiest and flexible options to design and develop their websites. However, having a simple web designing software doesn’t mean that you can develop a website the way you want it to work unless knowing how to develop your website that will do the things you want. I am about to share you my knowledge and experience while I was a beginner into web. I am assuming that the following points are important and anyone who is starting a website or blog should be aware about the following points before starting a website designing project.

How many of you start to design the website instantly using a WYSIWYG Editor. I believe there are lots of designers who use such tools. Among them Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 which is also one of my favorite and where lots of developers from beginner stage and professional stage use such application to ease their development and save their time. However, what really happening here is that, when you start developing a website using WYSIWYG Editor, you are allowing the WYSIWYG Editor to write down the codes for you in most of the cases. Now, for a beginner this can be considered as easy and suitable method, however for those who are crossing this stage to the next level will need to jump out from the WYSIWYG Editor and should try learning HTML, XML, Server-side scripting languages such as PHP or ASP, client-side scripting languages such as javascript, etc. Learning can always help you improve and understand the way things should be done. When designing a website it is not all about the scripting language or the images, graphics or fonts, however these are also key areas to consider however before starting a website, you should need to know a lot more.

Before starting your website project, get your self some time free from all the worries and have a pen or pencil along with few blank sheets of paper.

1. Ask your self why you want to design a website and Note down your eventual goal to be achieved from the website.

2. Think about the people or visitors who will visit your website, think about the majority type of people, and list them on a blank sheet of paper one by one on seperate lines. Types of visitors can be from a specific industry, business type, consumer, students, etc.

3. What are the main functions of your website? Write them on a new page. For example, the website can have several functions such as contact form, support service, chat, forum, guest book, gallery, comments, rss feeds, etc.

4. Explain each of these functions and write down the target you want to reach for each and every functions for your website.

5. Now arrange all these notes of papers on top of your table and look them closely.

Things you knew while you completed the tasks listed above will help you to list out the following key informations required for a web designing project.

1. Purpose of your website

2. Key Visitors you want to target

3. Website functional targets or objectives

Now broden your research by helping yourself with some more additional details supporting the above three major points.

Try to dig the points with the following questions.

1. Where are your visitors, are they locals or they belonging outside your territories or specific region.

2. What language is most preferable to your website visitors, do they have any common language?

3. How would you consider the personalities of your target audience or the visitors. Are they always in a hurry or have plenty of time to do lots of stuffs. If they are in a hurry, consider reducing the content of your website to a minimum number of words, and use more visuals. If they have lots of time, then consider allowing them to access plenty of information, visuals, interactive multimedias, etc. Allow them to fall in love with the functions in your website. yes the functions in your website is far more important then having a good looking website.

4. Do you think your website purpose or the mission will last longer then you have in plan or will those purpose change on certain time period or based on reasonable factors. If yes, consider writing down all such possible things that might change its original purpose. By doing this, you will be able to think of ideas for re-usability in terms of look and feel or visuals and graphics,  website pages or files and various scripts, etc. This will help you to organize your website content management approach either using a software application or an organized file system enabling you to make future changes easier. Finally you would understand that this approach will reduce the cost of future maintenance of the website and will not trouble you as if you need to have a major change to the website structure. The important role, is to develop your website functions in order to generalize with the potential business model behind the website structure.

5. While thinking about the functions of your website, try thinking globally at common functions you find in almost all the websites. It’s upto you and your business model to implement these functions. Although you think of all such functions to be in your website, consider the roles you have written for each function. Now think of your target visitors and search engines you want your website to be listed. From here,  try to implement easy understandable functions to your visitors and search engines. Such functions can include having your URLs generated in Search Engine Friendly(SEF) methods, content optimized for search engines and a clear navigation system for visitors to reach what they want from your website. Now consider the interactivity part of your website where the functions will interact with your target audience. There are many ideas, and such interaction can happen directly involving your self using chat or skype applications to chat with visitors instantly while they are on your website or you can have contact forms, small applications to interact with the visitors. Always know that simplicity is the best and allowing your interaction be as simple as possible will lead you into success along with your determination towards the approach I have mentioned in this article.

I hope you have enjoyed reading and try experimenting your self using your mind and friends as your instinct to over come your largest fear of not knowing what you should do with your website next.