In general websites are either used to provide information to your existing clients, back up your sales pitch, sell a product/service, or simply to educate people. It is important to review your company goals before undertaking any creative project. This should include:

• looking at your competitors' websites
• reviewing your marketing materials
• discussing messaging with your Sales and Marketing department
• looking at things from your client's perspective.

The old standard "if you build it, they will come" philosophy most often does not work. Once you have determined the purpose of your website, it is important to focus on who will be visiting it and how they will find it. You should ask yourself:

• Is your site designed to help your existing or potential clients learn more about your product or service?
• Is your goal to educate the masses, or focus on specific group?
• How important is it for search engines to find us?
• What do I hope my clients get from my website?

Once you know what you are going to say and whom you are going to say it to, you should focus on what tools/technology will accomplish those things.

• What applications will help your customers?
• Are there other sites that provide valuable information for your customers?
• What tasks can we have our website have us save time/money on?
• What will make people continue to visit our site?
• Map out the basic content for the entire site (a web outline)

Determining a budget can be difficult for any marketing project:

• What is the return on investment?
• What do we need to spend to look better than our competition?
• What can we get for our money?
• Can the designer I hire deliver what we want?

A good designer will assist you with a proposal stating what can be delivered and at what cost.

Once the project is a "go", the web designer should keep the content you have discussed in mind and develop 2-5 "Comps" showing how the site will look and feel. At the same time, you and your writer should map out the content of the site. The process should go something like this:

1. You decide you like one or two visual comps, and would like to try something similar...
2. You narrow down a home page design and begin work on the template for the rest of the site.
3. All compositions are "signed off on".

The designer then takes the comps and cuts them up for coding on the web. The navigation is set up, and the site begins to take shape.

1. The content is put in for the home page
2. Additional pages are filled in
3. Illustrations are drawn, functions are added
4. You review a functional yet "privately launched" site.
5. Revisions/enhancements are made
6. Site is launched