Before you create your site, you need to plan it. Otherwise, you can spend a lot of time and energy creating it, only to find that you didn’t want to organize it that way at all …
There are several things that you need to keep in mind while planning your website
Who’s your Target audience?
Although the beauty of the web is that people of many nationalities, ages, and cultures can meet together to exchange views and experiences, not all of them will be interested in your site. You need to decide who you’re aiming at – their age range, income bracket, nationality, hobbies, business interests, family circumstances. Many sites will be aimed a broad range of people, drawing visitors from all sectors. Others may have a narrower range for certain sectors – for example if you’re selling expensive sports cars you’ll need to target more affluent visitors. You probably won’t be aiming for teenagers, parents with children, or the very elderly.
Color
The color scheme will be the first impression your visitor gets of your site. Your target audience will to some extent dictate your color scheme. Different colors mean different things to different cultures. You also need to think about the content of your site – a music site for teenagers will need a completely different color scheme than a site offering health advice to seniors.
Colors “say” different things too – red is a hot color, used to convey both passion and aggression as well as love, intensity and competition. Black often conveys sorrow and death, but is also used to convey power, heaviness, or mystery.
Different colors have their own significance. For example:
- Black and golden or White and Golden together signify luxury.
- Purple also signifies luxury.
- Pink is for female products/services.
- If you have a lot of text, such as a blog, then white background is good since it is easy on eyes for reading.
- If your site has a lot of images, then having a black background enhances the look of the website.
Also, some colours go well together and some don’t. If you are outsourcing your web design, You might need to sit with your web designer and discuss the best color options. In case, you are doing it on your own, say, If you are building your website on WordPress, which I totally recommend. Then, you can go for purchasing popular themes from themeforest. Those popular themes that have a lot of downloads already have the popular color combinations.
Content
What do you want to include on your site? Making a brief note of all the items to include helps you to see how they link together, and which items will go together on one page. You also need to think about graphics – if you don’t have any already, check the Links section for websites that provide graphics for webmasters, or for tools to help you create your own.
Try to match your language and tone to your target audience. Only use “slang” if you’re sure that all visitors will understand it. It wasn’t until I started writing for the internet that I discovered that outside the UK, the common word “fortnight” (i.e. two weeks) is practically unknown. Only use acronyms and abbreviations if you’re sure visitors will recognize them. If you are providing a “teaching” site, you might think about including a glossary, or linking to one that already exists online.