Your First Steps...

1. Purpose

Start by defining the purpose of the website.  Focus on what it is to accomplish and how it will serve its visitors. A clearly defined purpose helps progress the planning process by identifying the audience and the content to be developed.

Set short and long term goals to make the purpose clear and plan for future expansion, modification, and improvement.  Ideally, goal-setting practices and measurable objectives should be identified to track the progress of the site and determine its success.

2. Audience

The audience is the group of people who are expected to visit your website – your target market.  These people will be viewing the website for a specific reason - so make sure you know exactly what they are looking for.  A clearly defined purpose or site goal, combined with an understanding of what visitors want to do or feel when they come to your site, will help to identify who is most likely to need or use your content.

Take account of your audience's information preferences, computer specifications, web experience, and other characteristics that may affect how they can most effectively use your site.

3. Content

Once you have identified your purpose and your audience, you may evaluate and organize your content.  List your content; then prune it ruthlessly for irrelevance to your audience's purpose.  Test it out on some kind of "focus group" if you can and compare it to competitors' offerings.  Categorize and organize your content.

You should now have an idea of the page and link titles, and their purposes.  Now break them into headings, paragraphs and individual sentences.  Also identify other items to appear on each page (such as pictures).