Make a List, Check it Twice, is your Website Naughty or Nice?

One would think, with the time of year and the title of this Blog posting, that this is a tongue-in-cheek holiday posting, and if One thinks that, then someone has Another Think Coming !

Making a list, prior to seeking out a Designer for your Website, can be all the difference between having a Website that users find “Nice” or one that they avoid because it’s “Naughty”

The best way to start is to create categories for your Website, besides the Homepage or “Index” file, what other areas do you want your Website to Cover.  What information do you want it to convey to your visitors?  The usual result of asking yourself this question is you come up with something much like this (we’ll use page in place of each category after Home )

Home<—>Page 1<—>Page 2<—>Page 3<—>Page 4

So now that we have each category mapped out, the next question to ask yourself is “What Content do I want in each category?”  This is where you can make bullet points for each category and the information you want, much like this

Home<—>Page 1<—>Page 2<—>Page 3<—>Page 4

|_Intro |_point 1   |_point 1  |_point 1    |_point 1

|_point 2   |_point 2  |_point 2    |_point 2

And so forth, so now lets say you want to include specific images with each point (we’ll use Home and Page 1 for this example to save some space)

HomeHome<—>Page 1

|_Intro           |_point 1

      |_img 1

      |_img 2

  |_point 2

As you an see the process becomes fairly straight forward, as you get everything flowing how you want it to lay out.  A Site map project like this, actually helps your Designer see your vision more clearly and allows you to focus your thoughts on what you want to see listed content wise