Planning for your website's success

It is not just about planning the number of pages and what you want your website to look like, but looking at what you really want to achieve, and creatively exploring possibilities and opportunities you may not have considered for your website.

A clear web development plan will ensure:

• you have a clear set of objectives against which your site can be measured
• we have the most efficient method for achieving your online objectives
• we have captured and understood all of your needs
• we understand your visitors and what is important to them
• the site meets your expectations and, more importantly, meets those of your visitors (read about Hyperlink's web design philosophy)

A well thought out plan will minimise risk, speed the delivery of your web site and ensure you have the best chance of success.

Planning a web site

All web sites benefit from a plan. A plan will keep your key objectives at the forefront and ensure that your web site is organised and well designed. If you know exactly what you what want to achieve then you can measure your success. There are a number of areas you can look at. These include:

• Website enquiries
• Online sales and orders
• Offline sales - driven by your website
• Brand development

Whatever your direct objective, you will want your visitors to take some form of action.

Download: Hyperlink's guide to planning a web site

Hyperlink's approach to working with you:

Any web site development involves risk. Hyperlink wants to ensure your risk is minimised and you are satisfied with the result. A robust development process is essential to achieve agreed outcomes. To achieve your web site objectives we:

1. Listen to you so we understand what you want and, if appropriate suggest alternatives.
2. Develop a site specification to ensure we have a complete understanding of your requirements (the extent and nature of this specification will depend on the size and complexity of your project).
3. We will not start on any development until you fully approve the site specification.
4. We will, after listening to your requirements and viewing your brand collateral, develop a site design template for your approval.
5. Once you have approved the design we will then start the page development of your site.
6. During the development process you will be able to view the progress of your project.
7. If you want changes to design or functionality at this stage you can bring them to our attention. Please note that changes may result in further costs. All changes required will be documented and appended to the site specification.
8. Prior to your web site going live we test and debug as appropriate. This is a process in which we involve you.
9. At the end of the project we evaluate and you approve the project against the agreed site specification.