Requirements for your new web site from

Requirements gathering

Information we need includes:

An understanding of what you want your website to do for you
What you want your website to look like
Basic company information... the sort of stuff you supplied to Yellow Pages

Tip: Wherever you see the infomark image ( ) at the end of a line, you can hover over the line to see more information

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We offer potential clients a 30 minute (half hour) free initial consultation.

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What is the website for?

primary purpose of your website
primary purpose of your website
Here are just a few examples to get you thinking
- Advertising
- Marketing
- Publicity
- Customer awareness
- Brochure
- Portfolio - Samples of your work
- Advice and guidance
- Sharing information
- Social purposes
- Product catalogue
- Online shop (e-Commerce)
- Publishing
- Providing an online service
- Events
- Charitable purposes
- Newsletters
- Fan club
We could go on forever.
The primary purpose of the Bobbing Wide website is to make you choose us for your website design and website development.
How we attempt to do this is a combination of quite a few of the above.
products or services you plan to offer online
products or services you plan to offer online
Do you have products to sell
or do you provide services
or a combination of the both?
The services that Bobbing Wide provide are:
- website design - we will design you a brand new website
- website development - we will develop your brand new website or we will upgrade your existing site
- website support - and we will continue to support your website
goals of your website
goals of your website
What is your goal for launching an online presence for your business?
Is it something measurable? Examples:
- Increase your customer base by x percent
- Increase your turnover by selling to online customers
- Increase your cash flow by selling off excess stock
- Reduce your workload
- Reduce the number of late night emergency calls
The goals of Bobbing Wide are:
- improve our work life balance
- to truly enjoy our work
what sets you apart
what sets you apart
What will set you apart from your competition?
What do you do better than your competitors? Why are your products superior? Why should people want you?
If you already have a reputation for quality, service, product range, price, or after care then you've got a big advantage over a startup company.
If not then we'll need to discover the hook lines that best describe you.
Then you have to find a way to get your customers to believe you.
your target audience
your target audience
Who will be your primary target market and who is your secondary target market?

What should your website look like?

Information we need to plan the web design and web development includes:

estimated website size
estimated website size
A simple way to determine the size and therefore the complexity of your website is to count the number of pages it will contain
By page I mean a separately choosable website page such as:
- home - the first page of your website
- product main page - the main page for your products, if not on the home page
- services main page - the main page for your services, if not on the home page
- about - a page that says something about your company
- contact form - an online form enabling customers to write to you online
- any number of product or services sub pages
- FAQ - frequently asked questions and their answers
words on each page
words on each page
The words on your website are known as the copy.
These have to perfectly and succinctly get your message across with the minimum of fuss.
As you can see from this attempt, some copy is better than others.
pictures
pictures
A picture can be worth a thousand words, but only if it is put in the correct context.
Photos or images are used to make your website more pleasing to the eye.
Their size, position and colour are as important as the message they convey.
You may already have photos and images that you want to use on your site. Or you may want to choose images from an enormous collection of stock photos.... searching on www.istockphoto.com for 'bobbing' will give you over 12 thousand results... but this picture is not one of those listed.
colour including icons and graphics
colour including icons and graphics
You can choose from the full spectrum of colours for your website
Using a limited set of colours from a particular scheme works best
There are tools and rules to help you choose
The colour scheme for this website was chosen by a colour schemer tool working from a base colour of #e2b735
Colours are used for foreground text, background colours, background images and icons
text style
text style
Text can be styled in a variety of ways
- font decides the shape of the characters
- size suggests how large or small it should appear
- weight indicates degrees of boldness or lightness
- text can be italicized or normal
- and many other transformations
Normally heading information is larger than paragraphs under the headings
layout
layout
The overall look and feel of your website is given by your page layout
The standard areas of a page are:
- header - where you might have your logo
- navigation menus
- body
- sidebars
- footer
Page layouts can be:
- Fixed (aka grid) - they don't change much when the window is sized.
- Floating - allowing areas of text to reflow when the window is sized
- Hybrid - containg a mixture of fixed and floating
Pages may appear in multiple columns: 1, 2, 3, etc
The Bobbing Wide website has a multi-column fixed format
navigation
navigation
To get from one part of your website to another we provide navigational links.
These may be styled to appear as menus, buttons or textual links.
You can choose how you present the choices to your customers:
- horizontal menu below the header
- simpler version of the menu in the footer
- dynamic menus which show more options as you hover over them
- vertical lists acting as menus
- call to action buttons or links
Links can also control how information is ordered on a page
You can choose to make the navigation simple or complex
For a very small website you may only need a horizontal menu below the header.
links
links
In addition to links between pages on your website you will also want
1. Links to other websites relevant to your business.
2. Links from other websites to your website.
The second set of links is the most valuable set as it can affect your ranking in website searches
We need to find the best places to make these links to your website, then arrange for the creation of them.
Creating incoming links is one way to help drive customers towards your website.
But be warned: It can be a time consuming business.

Basic company information

company name
company name
For example: Bobbing Wide is the name of our company.
company logo
company logo
Your company may be recognised by your company logo.
If you don't have one already then you will want to think about getting one
The current logo for Bobbing Wide is
Bobbing Wide
Not the best on the world ... but we're working on it
type of business
type of business
What type of business are you?
architect, accountant, B&B, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, caterer, chemist, dentist, designer, estate agent, faith healer, farrier, florist, garage mechanic, horticulturalist, insurance broker, jeweller, karate teacher, limousine hire, mousetrap inventor, nursery, occupational psychologist, orthodontist, photographer, podiatrist, poet, quidditch equipment supplier, restaurateur, retailer, sailmaker, spiritualist, surveyor, tennis coach, therapist, translator, undertaker, upholsterer, veterinarian, wedding planner, xylophonist, yacht broker, zoologist, ...
I'm sure there are many many more
company address
company address
Where is your business based?
This information is needed if you are interested in being found by people performing a local search
Your company address will also appear on your Contact Form
The business address for Bobbing Wide is:
Bobbing Wide
41 Redhill Road
Rowlands Castle
Hampshire PO9 6DE
England
United Kingdom
telephone numbers
telephone numbers
What telephone numbers can people call to contact you?
- Home
- Work
- Mobile
- Free phone
- Emergency
- Answer phone
- Fax
You will need to consider how you list these, and also who people should ask for when they call any of these numbers...
except for the fax that is
The contact numbers for
Bobbing Wide
are:
Home:+44 (0)2392 410 090

Mobile:+44 (0)7876 236 864
contact names
contact names
People like dealing with people.
So it makes sense to list the names of the people in your business who your customers will be contacting.
They also like to be able to put a face to a name, so you may want to provide photos as well.
Contacts at Bobbing Wide are
Herb Miller
and Susan Cowe
company email addresses
company email addresses
Do you already have email addresses that you want to use for your business or do you want role specific email addresses?
At Bobbing Wide we use company specific email addresses for mailto: and Contact information.
You will find our personal email addresses on our business cards.

Anything else you can think of?

template
template

There are literally thousands of templated themes available for instant selection of your website layout. If you choose to use a commercial layout then you may have to pay for this... but it should reduce the amount of time we spend developing this part of the website, leaving us more time for the content.
custom theme
custom theme
The alternative to a templated theme is the custom developed theme. Many other web designers advertise the fact that they develop the look and feel of their customer's sites from scratch.
If you have specific requirements for a particular layout, colour scheme and user interaction then you may be better off with a custom developed style.
Remember, the style of the site is partly defined by the CSS and partly defined by the XHTML. It should be quite easy to change the look of a well designed site simply by changing the CSS.
The CSS for the Bobbing Wide website involves custom CSS built on top of the CSS stylesheet package called blueprint.
forms
forms

For a web site to be interactive there needs to be somewhere that users can provide input other than by clicking on menu items.

This is achieved using forms. A common form is the enquiry form where the user is requested for some information which is then forwarded to the web owner. For static sites this is normally done by sending an email directly from the web server to the site administrator. For example: info@bobbingwide.com

You may also provide simple forms to enable users to calculate the cost of something, even if they cannot purchase it online.

Other forms include: Search, login, preferences. These are probably not required in a Static website.
other function
other function

Other functionality you may want to provide would be to enable customers to find your business

This can be achieved using Google maps or Google directions

You can also show your customers nearby places of interest
multiple languages
multiple languages

Another consideration is the global nature of the internet.

Even though you may only be a small company your customers/users may come from anywhere in the world. English may not be their first language. You may feel that it's important to support multiple languages.

The technical term for ensuring this is possible is called National Language Enablement or Internationalisation (I18n). The solution is designed to take into account cultural differences as well as language differences.

A simple example of a cultural difference is that people who live in Britain use the Post Code whereas Americans use ZIP codes.

then what?

Putting all this together helps us to determine which level of website you might need and how much it might cost

Compare levels at a glance

Bobbing Wide - web design - web development

Requirements gathering

Free consultation

What is the website for?

primary purpose of your website

products or services you plan to offer online

goals of your website

what sets you apart

your target audience

What should your website look like?

estimated website size

words on each page

pictures

colour including icons and graphics

text style

layout

navigation

links

Basic company information

company name

company logo

type of business

company address

telephone numbers

contact names

company email addresses

Anything else you can think of?

template

custom theme

forms

other function

multiple languages

then what?