E-NEWS VOL1 ISSUE 3

Relax and Plan your Web Site

I think we can all agree that as the days go by our schedules seem to get busier and busier. Sometimes it's hard to set aside good blocks of time to get organized or properly plan projects.

One of the most important questions that we have to ask ourselves here at Galvin is, "Are our clients finding adequate time to think about what they want their web site to do for their business?" One of the best things about taking the proper time to make thought-out decisions about your web site is that your site content will be more robust and complete, which in turn will make your site's design phase much easier and makes for a much more fluid process.

So, in our efforts to help you help your web site, we've come up with this list of simple steps to relax and plan your site by yourself or in a group:

STEP 1: Plan To Plan
Don't plan your site around your schedule. Actually make it a part of your schedule. Planning a little bit here and a little bit there doesn't work. Your notes will end up choppy and so will your site. Put it on your calendar. Tell everyone that you're busy. Don't take calls, emails, or visitors. And don't forget to close your door. If you really want to go for the gold, find a nice and quiet place away from the office.

STEP 2: Free Your Mind
If you have a limited amount of time, set an alarm on your watch or PDA to go off when you need to stop. This way you're not always distracting yourself by checking the time. Another good thing to do is to think about your business and not your work. Forget about what you did before and don't worry about what you're doing after. This is the time that you need to be focusing on the elements of your business that you want to represent on your web site.

STEP 3: Use Your Imagination
One thing that always helps in planning a site is to jot down as many ideas that you can think of. This especially works if you're having trouble getting started. Write down everything, even if you're not completely serious about it. Think about features, content, pictures, colors, and anything else that comes to mind. Once you have all of this on paper, you'll be able to visually narrow down and come to solid decisions on what you really want for your site. This will eventually give you an action list of things that you need to gather in order to create complete, consistent, and captivating content for your site.

STEP 4: The Creative Kick-Off
Once you have all of your notes together and you feel like you've got a grasp on what direction you want to take your site, you're ready to start the Galvin Creative Kick-Off. We'll sit down with you and/or your team to review and compare the notes that you've prepared as well as ones that we've prepared. During the Creative Kick-Off we'll come to solid decisions about the content, flow, and design of your site and then build milestones based on these. All of these steps are essential in creating a web site that will be the most economical, time effective and efficient for your business or project.