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This article was excerpted from Microsoft® Office FrontPage® 2003 Inside Out by Jim Buyens. Visit Microsoft Learning to buy this book. View other articles written by Jim Buyens.

This is the first in a sequence of three articles excerpted from Chapter 4, "Planning and Organizing FrontPage-Based Web Sites."

See links to all articles in this sequence

In this article

Planning is important

Defining your site's content

Identifying your message

     Understanding the audience

     Identifying content categories

Planning is important

Whatever your site's size and purpose, proper advance planning will produce a better appearance, more organized content, faster construction, and easier ongoing maintenance. More importantly, a well-planned site will attract more visitors, better meet the site's original goals, and be cheaper to run.

This chapter addresses the core aspects of planning and producing a Web site. These aspects are closely interrelated: You can't plan without understanding the work to be done, and without a sound plan you can't properly do the work. That is why learning to organize and produce Web sites is an iterative process that considers increasing levels of detail.

Most of all, keep in mind that design of any kind — Web, print, or other — is a human process requiring human judgment to obtain human objectives. No piece of software — not even FrontPage 2003 — can design your site or judge it ready for public consumption. Beauty is a human concept, and not a mechanical one.

Defining your site's content

All successful Web sites start out with a well-defined mission. This leads to a well-organized, well-defined body of content and ultimately to effective communication. Taking the time up front to understand your mission will certainly pay off in timely, effective results later.

Identifying your message

Step one in building or maintaining a Web site is to understand why the site's sponsors want it to exist. Some sites send an overt or implicit message; some provide a business function; some are hobbies in and of themselves. If you don't understand a site's true purpose, you are very unlikely to achieve it. Instead, you might end up sending a message like, "I'm just learning HTML," "I'm scatterbrained," or "I'm trying to increase ugliness and confusion in the world."

"Establishing a presence" is probably the most common reason for starting a Web site, but this is terribly vague. It usually means following a perceived trend, keeping up with competitors, or responding to requests from others. Here are more focused (and more useful) reasons for starting a Web site:

• Promoting a desired public image
• Advertising products and services
• Selling products or services directly to Web visitors
• Providing post-sale services and support
• Increasing knowledge and awareness of a person, a topic, or an organization
• Releasing information in accordance with law or an organization's charter

You will almost certainly need to drill through several levels of detail to fully understand your site's mission. Investigating each level generally leads to questions for the next. The end result should be a mission statement, even if informal, that describes the site's purpose and objective.

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Understanding the audience

As important as knowing your site's message is knowing its audience. "Everyone on the Web" is too vague an audience to be useful; you should have some particular kinds of people in mind — perhaps even specific people to use as models. The following are typical audiences:

• Everyone in a certain industry
• Practitioners of a certain skill
• Purchasers of a certain type of product or service
• Users of a specific product or service

After you decide who your audience is, you should learn whatever you can about them. Are they technical, artistic, or people-oriented? What are their skills and interests? What is their level of vocabulary and education? Do they respond more to detailed text or to color, style, and visual metaphors?

You hope, of course, that your audience will find your site's message inherently interesting and attractive. Often, however, they'll need some other enticement. Perhaps you can entice visitors with a free clip art library and then, while they browse, sell them your graphics program. Perhaps you can sell art supplies as people browse a library of works or techniques. If they come for information about a product they already own, perhaps you can sell them another.

The ultimate enticement, according to recent thinking, is to make your site the meeting place for a community of some kind — presumably a community with an interest in your product or message. The goal is then to make your site such a valuable resource — such a compelling place for people in your target audience to find each other and interact — that the site becomes a "must visit." This generally requires some sort of added content that is updated frequently and not readily available elsewhere. It also requires a means for visitors to enhance the site themselves and to find other visitors without invading anyone's privacy. This sort of community is more often talked about than achieved in practice, although it remains a lofty goal. It also illustrates the importance of providing a magnet to attract targeted visitors.

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Identifying content categories

If your site is typical, the home page will be the most time-consuming of all to construct. There are several reasons for this:

• The home page presents the site's first impression; therefore, it is usually the most elaborate page in the site. Remember the old saying: "You get only one chance to make a first impression."
• Despite being the site's most elaborate page, the home page must download quickly. Otherwise, Web visitors will give up after a minute or two and go elsewhere.
• The home page often serves as the prototype for the entire site's visual appearance. It sets the tone and image for every page that follows.
• If you are new to creating Web pages, a home page will probably be your initial learning experience.
• The options on the home page intrinsically represent the site's primary structure.

The first four issues usually work themselves out, but the last one is critical. If you can identify the top few options in your site, you probably have a good understanding of its message and audience. If you can't get your home page organized, your content plan probably isn't organized either.

FrontPage provides built-in templates and wizards that create typical pages for many kinds of sites, but at best they produce only starting points. No two sites are exactly alike; your site's content and organization are ultimately your unique creation.

Here are some terrible ways to organize a site:

• Offer an option for each member of the design committee.
• Provide an option for each person who reports to the top executive.
• List an option for each category that someone thought of, in chronological order.
• Repeat the same options that you used at a previous site.

All of the above share the same problem: They ignore the target visitor's likely interests and mindset. They indicate a lack of defined message, defined audience, or both.

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Next article in this sequence

Part 2: Defining your site's style

About the author   Jim Buyens is a FrontPage, Web programming, and networking expert who has written several books, including Microsoft® FrontPage® Version 2002 Inside Out, Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition, Faster Smarter Beginning Programming, and Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services Inside Out, all from Microsoft Press. Jim is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) who contributes extensively to the Microsoft FrontPage online communities. He currently develops Web-based business systems for the telecommunications industry.