A New Website: Do you Know What you Want?

At Cyber Sushi Design, we regularly receive phone calls from potential customers requiring website design services with no idea of what they actually want. When we ask if they know how many pages the site needs, the answer is often, “I’m not sure”.

For small businesses that have not had extensive exposure to the web, this is perfectly understandable. However, for a website to actually work there are some considerations that need to be made. Only then can we provide realistic time frames, costs and a design.

New Website Design Checklist

Here’s a Cyber Sushi Design checklist for anyone looking to enlist a web designer to build them a new website. This will help ensure you don’t draw a blank when asked the all-important questions web designers need to know.

1. Web address

Web designers need to know if you own a domain/URL. That’s the “www.” address. If not, they need to know if you intend to purchase one or if they should on your behalf.

2. Existing Site

If you have an existing website, a new web designer will require access to this site. It’s also useful to provide a summary of what you like and dislike about it.

3. Timelines

When you are looking to have a new website go live

4. Your Business

It is useful for all web designers to know about your company values and its services. This enables them to consider a design relevant to your niche. If you are enlisting a company to also create your content, there is essential information you should provide. Information such as, when the company was founded, what you do, the region you serve, target market, competitors etc.

5. Links

It’s often helpful to provide the URLs of websites that you like the look of. And also to your competitor’s sites, highlighting what you like and dislike about them.

6. CMS

Do you require the ability to edit your site yourself? This is an important point. Adding a content management system (CMS) will provide the ability for you to add fresh content to your website. This will be possible via a simple editing tool. A CMS website is beneficial because search engines like to see that websites are regularly refreshing their content. In turn, this ensures they are ranked better than sites where content remains the same. Please note: It’s likely you will incur additional costs if your web designer has to regularly update site content.

7. Content

To help establish the number of pages you require, you need to consider what content you want your website to provide, do you require:

A shop – to sell products online
Links to social networks – for marketing purposes
A blog/news section – to impart advice, provide tips and share news
Testimonials – to share reviews of your services from other clients to promote a job well done
A contact form – sharing address details, a map, telephone and fax numbers, email address etc

8. Additional Services:

Mobile site – to ensure your site is optimised for mobile users on-the-go
Hosting – webspace that allows your site to exist online
Logo design – a logo for your business to appear on your website
Copywriting – for writing your web content or ghost-writing a blog regularly to keep your site fresh
SEO – to optimise your site ensuring it ranks well in search engines such as Google
Analytics – to establish how well your site is working for you

Hopefully, this list will prove useful for you if you are planning a website revamp or starting from scratch. Having this information would certainly help us to understand your requirements. And as a result, we could provide an accurate, no-obligation quote with timelines for your approval.

If you have considered all of the above, get in touch with Cyber Sushi Design today, call us on 01494 356 778 for more information. Cyber Sushi Design, web designers in High Wycombe will be happy to discuss your web project further.