Carefully considering the purpose of your site and what your goals are will save you a lot of time in development and help you determine who your target audience is. The following lists common site goals.

• To educate
• To entertain
• To allow interaction
• To inform users
• To collect information from users
• To advertise a product or service
• To allow online purchasing

Once you've decide on your goals, it's a good idea to explore similar sites and evaluate the strategies used for effectiveness.

Who is your intended audience? The key here is to decide the hardware and bandwidth your site will require. Users who have limited hardware capabilility will go somewhere else if your pages take too long to display. Common ways of profiling a target audience is as follows.

Possible ways to profile your target audience include:

• Demographically
  Age, gender, culture, national origin, geographic location
• Psychographically
  Hobbies, interests, political views, professional activities
• Computer capabilility
  Low-tech or high-tech
• User computer skills
  Beginner, intermediate or advanced

Once you have a good idea what your goals are and who your audience is, you can plan your site structure by doing the following.

1. Identify content requirements
   
   Content development is a very time-consuming process that you must carefully consider before you start construction. In addition, although many organizations have content developed in other formats, remember that CMYK, such as that used for printing marketing literature does not readily translate into RGB screen color. In addition, you must convert formats produced by word processors and other applications into HTML in order to incorporate such content in the Web site. Beware of copyright infringements.

2. Identify interactive and functional requirements
   
   Beginning designers easily paint themselves into a corner when confronted with unfamiliar technologies. Offering interactivity to the user involves expanding beyond the scope of HTML and into other technologies such as JavaScripting, CGI scripting and server side issues. If you plan to incorporate server-side functionality, the host you choose must support it. Examples: searching, online purchasing, security, feedback forms, data capture.

3. Choose a navigational structure
   
   A sure way to confuse your audience is to have an unclear or inconsistent navigational structure that leaves them guessing what your site is all about and what message you are trying to convey. Examples: by topic, function, audience, chronological, geographical, metaphorical.

4. Choose a file structure
   
   The deeper the hierarchy of your site structure, the more difficult it is to maintain. In addition, deep structures tend to lose the user, as they cannot intuitively know where they are in your site. Conversely, a site that is too shallow often requires you include too many link options on one page, creating an excessive number of choices that can overwhelm the user.

Click here to open example design.

What is the purpose of the site?

Who is the audience and how can they be profiled?

What ideas do you have about the site structure including functionality, interactivity, navigational structure, file structure?