We find that the very first question you must ask yourself is "What is the goal of my web site?"  Do I want to sell products or Services on line? If so do I just want to give potential customers information and contact details or sell the products or services directly?  Will you offer the customers a combination of products,services and useful information?

If you decide to sell directly on line how will you process sales?  Off-line via an email order form or online using a secure shopping cart site?  If you use a cart will you be processing cards via virtual merchant such as PayPal, 2checkout etc.

Decide on the Structure

The structure of your site is very important as this will be how people will navigate your site.  Try these useful tips so you get some idea of what you wish your site to look like and more importantly how many pages you require

1. Brainstorm with friends, family, colleagues and write everything down.
2. See what topics can be grouped together.
3. Assign a page name to your categories and sub categories.  You should now have an idea of how many pages your website will need and what will be most suitable.

Here are some ideas for categories

1. Home Page. This is the first page that your visitors will see.  The contents of this page should be chosen very carefully as it will either keep your visitor or turn him off.  They say you have 30 seconds to get his interest and that the title and sub title are very important in more ways than one.
2. Contact page. This should contain all the information that you wish your visitor to have regarding contacting you.  It is a proven fact that the more information you provide such as telephone number, address (NOT PO BOX) that you provide the visitor the more they will trust you.  We will even include a contact form if required.
3. Products / Services. One page per product / service that describe the service / product.
4. Special Offers.
5. Links page.

Once you have decided on the categories and pages that you need you then need to decide on the content. The best way of doing this is to take a blank piece of paper and write the page name at the top of each page.

When writing the text you may want to keep in mind that:

• People don't want to hear about you bragging about your company.  They want to know what is it in for them.
• What will your products or services do for the customer.
• if you were in the customers position what would you want to see?
• Have you got any leaflets or brochures that you can use.