1. Why am I Making This Site?
This is the first, and most important, question to answer. If you create a website on a whim and don’t know why you made it, then you are going to be lost from day one.
There tend to be two major reasons why people create websites- they either want to make money, or they want to spread a message. The two are not mutually exclusive, but one is going to take the lead in your plans and designs. For example, if you are creating a website with the website builder to make money than you are going to operate your website solely by the numbers. You are going to make choices that might alienate and annoy some of your visitors, but which result in higher conversion rates for sales and ad clicks.
On the other hand, if you build a website primarily to provide free content and to spread information and a powerful message that you deeply believe in, than any monetization methods you employ are going to need to interfere with user experience as little as possible.
2. What is my website’s focus?
There are websites out there that cover a wide variety of subjects. On the other hand, many websites online are hyper-focused on a very specific, very small niche. Cake Wrecks (a website devoted exclusively to photographs of misshapen cakes) is a great example of this kind of hyper-focused website.
It’s important that you understand the scope of your website well before you make it. An ambiguous website is going to have a much harder time finding and maintaining an audience than a focused website. Even those seemingly far reaching websites often are more focused than you think. American comedian Donald Glover’s website may cover everything from clothes to food to music videos to women he finds attractive, but the site as a whole is focused tightly around his personality.
Know what your site is and isn’t about before you make it, and stick to this understanding
3. How am I going to Market my site?
How you market your site will help shape your site’s content. Are you going to market through Youtube? Then you’ll need plenty of videos. Utilizing article marketing? Written content that stands alone and can be easily converted into new articles will be most important for your site.
4. How often will I update my site?
It’s important to have a strategy for updating your site well before you get started on it. Those sites that become most popular are often those sites which are most reliable.
Of course, you need to be realistic when you set this schedule for yourself. While it’s ambitious and admirable to decide that you are going to create a blog that you update with high quality content every day, that isn’t a realistic schedule for most people. If you look at your general life and work schedule and realize that you can only update with high-quality content once a week, than only schedule in one update a week.
Most visitors don’t care whether or not a website updates every day or once bi-weekly. They do, however, care that the site always produces valuable content and sticks to the schedule it promises.
5. How will this be fun for me?
At the end of the day, if you don’t enjoy working on your site you aren’t going to stick with it very long. Whether your fun involves working in a reward each time you wrap up and shut down your website builder, or whether it involves making sure that you allow yourself some personal discursions on your site here and there, you need to actively structure in ways that your website will always be an enjoyable aspect of your life.
