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New Website Checklist

Building a great website takes more than just designing the pages and hosting it on a domain. It takes patience and research to understand your niche, competitors and how you can create the website your business and customers deserve.

But really, that’s just the marketing behind it.

In this checklist, I’ll be talking to all of the people right now adjusting to the world in pandemic mode, and trying to figure out so many things at once.

If you’re building a website yourself, or using a developer, you need to have a few things in order before you pay your first deposit as the business or website owner.

To make things easier for you, I have listed my personal project questionnaire that covers a 50,000ft level of understanding so that you can identify what you have, and don’t have before starting your website design project.

P.S. Good luck to you, hit me up if you need any help!

Do you have all of your brand’s initial needs?

This includes but is not limited to:

  • Vector / RAW Logo Format
  • Corporate Color Scheme
  • Mission Statement
  • Value Proposition and Call to Actions
  • Corporate Emails and Profiles
  • Website Content / Services Content

Do you know what hosting & domains are?

Not all website hosting is the same.

A basic understanding of where your website will be hosted (Like GoDaddy) and who else is hosted on that server will be your top priorities, in addition to any extra services like email hosting and security certificates (SSLs).

Speed and location are important to factor in, not to mention customer service.

Do you have an understanding of the basic website process?

From mockups to code, it’s important for you (the stakeholder) to understand what time and effort are focused on, and how it will come to a beautiful finish.

Don’t lock yourself to a “custom” framework or platform that you can’t get help for a year from now, but also make sure you’re not building too much from scratch. There’s a lot of really great information out there to “guerrilla market” your business.

Do you plan to edit it yourself, in-house, or outsource?

After the website is completed, who will be in charge of updates?

Will you want to post content to your visitors as well?

These are important questions to ask, as you don’t want to be left with a website you can’t manage, or a web developer you can’t get a hold of to make the smallest change.

Pro Tip: Get a copy of your entire website, assets and anything created by you at the end of project. Douglife Marketing prefers to send USB drives to clients on completion.

What is your value proposition?

Will your visitor understand the value proposition within the first few seconds of landing?

If not, you need to ensure they do. Most visitors will bounce off of a website in under 5 seconds if it doesn’t provide them they answer they are looking for.

Make sure to design the layout to not only entice, but also engage and answer, providing value to your visitors for years to come.

What are your competitors offering?

It’s a great idea to take a good look at the competitive landscape, and see how your competitors are leveraging the web to suit their needs.

Often times, you can find ways to improve your website and value proposition, without re-inventing the wheel.

Most importantly though, you’ll look to see how you can stand out. Find one or two small, strategic goals and focus on them while the website is being built. If you have the domain already, it’s that much easier.

How will you know it’s working?

There’s no point in building a website if you can’t see the results, and unless the phone is ringing off the hook, you may not ever know.

It’s very important to understand your visitor as much as possible, and that means using something like Google Analytics to track a wide variety of metrics allowing you deep insight into your visitor, your website, and your marketing efforts.

All in all, the main point I’m trying to make is as a website owner, the more you know about your needs the easier it will be for you to relay your ideas and values to your designer, or create it yourself and ultimately end up with a better website suited for your needs.

Thanks for reading! 😃

Schedule a Consultation with someone who cares about your website as much as you do.

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