Website Planning

I'm in the process of moving 13 years of client files to a new hard drive. It reminded me of the clients I enjoyed working with as well as the lessons I learnt from dealing with difficult customers. If I had my time over, I would qualify prospects by asking them if they had a business plan. In most cases the difficult customers were those without any direction and unrealistic expectations of what a website would do for their business.

It might be a cliché but if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That's especially true when creating a business plan for a website business. The frustrating thing is it isn't that hard, but like anything you need the right direction. Although I discuss keyword research in my website planning videos, you should remember that for most businesses, this is only one way for people to find your site. Here are some ideas:

• Put your web address in a prominent spot on all your marketing material
• If you have a retail store with street frontage, put your web address on the store
• Sponsor an event and include a competition where event visitors have to find and submit something that appears on your website

To learn more about creating a business plan for your website business, register for my free website planning videos.

The final lesson in the free website planning video tutorial series has been completed. Once you have completed your plan, learn how to choose a web developer. 

The lessons are free but you need to register and login to view the video.

Lesson 6 of the free website planning tutorials is now online. you will learn some techniques to help you write your website text.

The lessons are free but you need to register and login to view the video.

Lesson 5 of the free website planning tutorials is now online. In this lesson I explain:

• the page title tag
• the meta description tag
• the H1 tag
• keyword density
• link text
• images

The lessons are free but you need to register and login to view the video.

Lesson 4 of the free website planning tutorials is now online. In this lesson I explain:

• How to research your competitor's websites
• Brainstorming for website content ideas
• Placing your content ideas into a sitemap
• Creating an action plan to produce your content

The lessons are free but you need to register and login to view the video.

Lesson 3 of the free website planning tutorials is now online. In this lesson I explain:

• Potential website goals
• How to measure your goal
• Important website metrics

The lessons are free but you need to register and login to view the video.

Lesson 2 of the free website planning tutorials is now online. In this lesson I explain:

• How search engines work
• Organic search results
• Paid search results
• Keyword research
• How to reverse engineer your competitor's website
• How to pick the keyword that is most likely to bring you results

The lessons are free but you need to register and login to view the video.

Lesson 1 of the free website planning tutorials is now online. In this lesson I explain:

• The importance of planning
• The three major steps involved in a website development
• Domain names
• The ideal domain name
• Web hosting
• Typical costs to build and maintain a website

The lessons are free but you need to register and login to view the video.