10 Steps to creating a great website

Here are ten crucial steps to creating a succesful website

1) Ask yourself why you are bothering.

Make sure you know the answer to this one.

2) Keep up to date.

Make sure you know what is already on offer and how new technologies might affect your business.

3) Buy a domain name.

Good luck, there are not many good ones left.

4) Find an organisation to host your website.

Beware of free hosting as this invariably involves adding adverts to your website.

5) Self Build or Outsourcing.

Do you have the time and abilities to build your own website? If your needs are simple this is a real possibility. Decide how you will get your site built.

6) Plan the structure of your site.

Remeber to keep your focus and initially only try to serve one audience.

7) Consider and start writing the content for your site

Fresh, original content written around a set of core keyphrases.

8) Only now should you begin to consider the design of the site.

Find sites you like and be influenced by them.

9) Build your site.

Whether it is self build or outsourced, make sure your website complies to web standards.

10) Test your site.

The greatest content and most wonderful graphics won't sell a single product if your checkout doesn't work, test your site on many computers with different browsers over different connections.

Congratulations.

You now have a website. Welcome to the world wide web. You and thirty billion others. The work has just begun. How will you get noticed? How will you get traffic? How will people find you? Will they buy from you? Will they trust you? Don't be scared or put off. This is the fun bit.