Website Planning Checklist
The following checklist will help clarify your needs and goals when creating a website –
you’ll be surprised at how many decisions must be made before any production begins!
Even if you already have a pretty good idea of what you want your site to look like,
you’ll come to realize that the more planning done up front, the more time you’ll save
during the actual building of the site.
Defining Purpose
 What is the purpose/intent of your site? The clearer your intent, the more focused
your website will be. Try to narrow the purpose of your website into one sentence.
 What are your goals for this website? Are you providing information or a service?
Are you promoting or selling? What are you looking to get out of this site? Developing
specific goals will help ensure that decisions made regarding your site will help you meet
these goals.
 Determine who your audience is.
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Are you looking to attract customers, clients? Is this a portfolio site to impress
future employers?
What demographics should your site attract? Are you looking for people in a
certain profession?
What is your visitor’s state of mind? Are they researching a topic? Are they
looking to make a purchase? Searching for a new hire?
Look at your goals from a viewership perspective – could visitors be landing on
your site for various purposes?
Site Structure
 Analyze websites about the same topic for inspiration. If you’re making a site to
sell your handmade clothing line, look at other small business clothing sites. How is their
site organized? What kinds of pages are included? How are these pages organized/laid
out? Look for consistencies and differences between websites. What do you like about
their sites? What could you do better?
 How will your pages link together? With your list of pages in hand, how will these
pages connect to each other? It can be helpful to draw out a diagram like these examples:
Content & Design Planning
As they say, “content is king” – meaning that the reason visitors will stay on your site and
continue to come back is because you offer something of value to them. No matter how
great your site looks, if there is nothing useful for the visitor, they won’t stay on your site.
Therefore, planning the site’s content (including text, images and other multimedia) is an
important, ongoing process.
 Determine what copy is needed for the pages of the site and start writing. What
text is going to go on each page? Remember that web writing style is dictated by how
users read the web – usually by quickly scanning a page and extracting the information
they need before they click to another page. For some quick information about writing for
the web, visit http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/writing.
 Plan for and collect any multimedia you’ll want to include. Web sites often contain
multiple kinds of media for users to view and interact with such as photos and graphics,
audio, video clips and slide shows. It’s helpful to know what kind of media will go on
each page in this planning process because you’ll know that there is room left on the page
for that great video you wanted to feature with the text you wrote.
 Consider colors and design appropriate to your topic and audience. While content
is king, an unattractive or inappropriately designed site is not going to encourage visitors
to stay and browse your website. Again, looking at other websites about your topic will
help you with design considerations.
o Don’t use an intro page – it’s a useless barrier that will not help you from a
search engine standpoint
o Don’t have music automatically play when a page loads. If you must have
music, let the visitor choose when to play it. Also, don’t forget to offer a way
to turn the music off!
o Customize any pre-designed template as much as possible to prevent the site
from looking too cookie-cutter
o Watch your color contrast – your text should be easy to read against a
background color or image
o Pick easy-to-read, sans serif fonts
Getting Help
Web Services
webteam@stedwards.edu
Training
http://think.stedwards.edu/computerhelp/training
Joana Trimble, Training Manager
Moody Hall 319
448-8816
joanat@stedwards.edu
Jenny Cha, Training Coordinator
Moody Hall 313
448-8554
jcha@stedwards.edu
Mike Bell, Part-Time Training Coordinator
Moody Hall 311
428-1296
mikekb@stedwards.edu
Help Desk
Help Desk Contact Information
http://think.stedwards.edu/computerhelp
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On campus: Moody Hall 309
Phone: 512-448-8443
Email: helpline@stedwards.edu