WEBSITE PLANNING WORKSHEET

This questionnaire is designed to enhance communications between Advent Digital and our clients. Why don't you print it on your printer, and have it handy when you discuss your project on the phone with a Advent Digital representative. After we've you've filled in the blanks as we talk on the phone, please make a photocopy for your records, and mail a signed copy to me. It provides a written memorandum of our mutually-agreed plan.

Organization Name: ____________________________________

1. Purpose

Give the most important purpose a "1", next most important a "2". Leave those blank which do not interest you at all.
__ To gain a favorable impression of the company or organization.
__ To help develop a qualified list of prospects.
__ To make available brochures, documents, and specifications over the Internet.
__ To make available sales support items like documents and specifications over the Internet.
__ To setup field reporting over the Internet.
__ To encourage potential customers to contact us by phone or mail to consummate a sale.
__ To encourage support and/or returns to be initiated online.
__ To develop an online forum of customers and/or users.
__ To make available product/service information and price lists to customers.
__ To strengthen brand identification and company awareness.
__ To sell products directly taking credit card information over the Internet.
__ Other _______________________________________________________

2. Site Organization

Please label pages you desire and cross out the rest.

Total number of pages decided upon ________________

3. Site and Domain Names

Site Name on Masthead: ____________________________________

Domain Name It must be registered through your web hosting service and approved by a domain registration service before you can use it. You may check the availability of your domain name at Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com)

Domain name ____________________________________         ___Desired ___Already Registered

4. Masthead Graphic

It is very helpful if you will include a copy of your company's letterhead, brochures, catalog, etc. so we can see how you present your company image.
__ Company Logo incorporated in the masthead graphic? If so, please enclose a color copy. 
__ Photo or drawing of product?
__ Typeface preference __________________________________________

__ Preferred colors in palette (PMS colors?) _______________________________________

__ Other ideas _________________________________________________________

5. Color and Accents

For the most part, we recommend a white background for best readability and contrast, with a band of color or a pattern running down the left margin of the webpage. Your preference: _________________

6. Navigation System

The navigation system of all our Standard Website Packages includes:

  • Links from the front page and sectional pages to every page in the system to enable Web search engines to "spider" and index content on every page.
  • Colored bar "Image Map" with a brief word or two indicating each page -- or, in larger sites -- each section of the website. This appears at the bottom of every page. In some sites we put this both top and bottom. You are limited to a maximum of about eight (8) selections on this image map. We use server side image maps to make it easy to expand the site at a later time without having to change the coding on each page of the site. For this reason, and to keep costs down, we do not include separate "buttons" on our standard sites. Included in sites of 6 pages or more.
  • Left-Side Menus with text links are especially useful on larger sites. Included in sites of 6 pages or more. They can allow more detail than an 8-item bottom image map, and can enable visitors to see from any page how to get to any other. These may be white or light-colored over a dark left-side color or pattern, or black or dark over a light left-side color or pattern.

Optional Systems. Circle those you wish incorporated in your site.

  • Frames System where, typically, a scrolling menu remains on the left side to provide navigation. We do not recommend frames in practically any situation, since they are a design disaster. They do not always print out, cannot be bookmarked easily, and often make the page design look "tacky" with their ugly gray scroll bars. We see them as the amateur's way to look cool. In a very few cases, they are useful: (1) to display large databases of information, (2) purposely hide URLs of content pages, (3) send visitors to other sites while making it easy for them to come back. (Extra charge)
  • Search Engine is useful on larger sites of 20+ pages to help visitors quickly find what they're looking for. (Extra charge)

7. Basic Page Elements

These are the important items which appear on nearly every webpage on your site (except the "home" page).

  • Page titles which show at top of Web browser only
  • Top-of-page graphic based on the design of the masthead graphic
  • Page Title in larger type. Heading Font Style: ________________ (recommend Arial Bold)
  • Text. Body Font Style: ___________________ (recommend Arial)
  • Image Map by Image Map bar
  • Standard company ID near bottom of page
  • E-mail response link to the following e-mail address: _________________________
  • Copyright and trademark information in small print at the bottom of every page. What registered trademarks, trademarks, and service marks does your company want to indicate here?

Do you have any trademarks or service marks? If so, please list them here and indicate which are registered trademarks.

8. Photos, Graphics, Animations, Sound, and Video

Our contract includes a statement that you own the copyright to, or have permission from the copyright owner to use any photos or graphics you send us.

  • Clipart tends to look a bit tacky on websites. We recommend photos.
  • Photos you supply either by sending the photos themselves for us to scan and return, or by sending the digitized images on a diskette or by email.
  • Stock photos obtained from Photodisc (http://www.photodisc.com), Fotosearch Stock Photography http://www.fotosearch.com/, PictureQuest (http://www.picturequest.com/). (You write down the photo number and inform us of your choices, and which page each photo goes on. We can help you select the photos, but we would need to bill you for our time at our hourly rate.)

For an extra charge, we can equip your website with:

  • Sound, either MIDI musical background or streaming Real Audio for music or voice.
  • Animated GIF images. High quality photo images are available from PhotoDisc (http://www.photodisc.com) and other sources. We can also make animations for an extra charge.
  • Flash Animations
  • Video clips
  • Transaction Engine – Online Selling 24/7
  • Online Catalog with descriptions and photos

9. Response Forms

What is the purpose of your response form?

__ Guestbook for visitors to record comments
__ Request for information
__ Survey of customer preferences

10. Registering and Advertising Your Website

  • Advertising your Website to Web search engines that index the Web
  • Giving customers a good reason to come by offering them something
  • Finding industry-wide linking pages and negotiating reciprocal links to and from their webpages.
  • Purchasing Web advertising
  • Becoming active in several of the thousands of Internet news groups and mailing lists
  • Developing a "signature" mini-ad attached to all your e-mail messages
  • Making your website part of one or more of the many "malls."
  • Including your e-mail and Web addresses on all your company's print literature, stationery, and display advertising
  • E-mail newsletters

Information about number of visitors to your website can usually be obtained from your Internet Service Provider, from statistics generated daily by such programs as WWWSTAT, GETSTATS, or Analog on the host computer. We do not include page counters on our Standard Website Packages

We submit your information to Web search engines to "register" your website after final payment is received. Before doing this we work with you to get 50 to 100 keywords and a carefully constructed 25-word sentence contain the most important keywords.

11. Maintenance

Target Date____________________

Package prices include minor updating over the first 30 days of the contract. This covers minor price changes, product changes, etc. It does not include major changes, such as changing newsletter content (which essentially involves constructing a new webpage), which is billed at our hourly rate.

Target Date for final payment to be made and your Web Site to be advertised: _____________

On behalf of my organization I approve the above plan which I have developed with Advent Digital to construct a website, and I authorize Advent Digital to use this Website Planning Worksheet as the basis of the project.

Signature _____________________________________ Date _________________


These are the items that will make up the package you'll be sending to us:

  • Website Planning Worksheet
  • Website Development Agreement
  • Website Content Worksheet which will define for us the:
    • Written content for your web pages (preferably on a diskette formatted for Microsoft Word, Word Pad, or notepad.
    • Photos or graphics to be included. You may send graphics and photos which we can scan into electronic form. Even better, send us a diskette or ZIP disk with your graphics in any popular PC format, such as GIF, JPEG, BMP, EPS, CDR, PCX, etc.). If these are in Mac format, make sure each picture has a 3-digit extension, such as .jpg to indicate the format in which it is given.
    • Your company logo (if any), and tell us the PMS color. 
  • Samples of your printed materials -- brochures, letterheads, cards, booklets, etc. -- so we can see how you present your company image.
  • Check for the amount stated on Website Development Agreement for down payment.

We are looking forward to receiving your materials and constructing your website!

Send To:

Greg Schipper, President
Advent Digital
1323 Vista Del Monte - San Antonio, TX 78216 USA
(210) 493-6193 (phone)

www.AdventDigital.net

Helpful Documents in Microsoft Word

1) Website Planning Worksheet - (To download right click, Save Target as)

2) Website Content Worksheet - (To download right click, Save Target As)