While every industry, company and website is different, the process for designing or "re-designing" your website are the same.

Here are the steps involved:

1. Define general goals
2. Define marketing objectives
3. Create a requirements document

Define your general goals

It is a great idea to put on paper what the primary and secondary goal is for your website.

It is very easy to get lost in all the details of your website, and then lose sight of what are the important things your website must do for your business.

If your website has several goals, try to prioritize them and list them on paper.

If you have an existing website, write down what is working well with your website, and what areas you know are not working well and need to be improved.

Define your marketing objectives

Where does your website fit into your overall marketing strategy?

Is your website tightly integrated with promotions, surveys, or direct mail campaigns? Or is your website more of a corporate brochure?

Knowing where your website fits into your overall marketing strategy will help us to better design the website and make sure all necessary features are included so you can achieve your marketing goals.

Create a requirements document

You should start by putting on paper everything you can think of that you need your website to do.

The main purpose for a rquirements document is to facilitate a discussion about the scope of work needed for your project, both internally and with potential resources.

Requirements documentation can vary from your navigation structure to very specific changes to an existing website to new features or capabilities you need the website to be capable of.

If you have never created a formal requirements document before, just put in writing what you need to have done, and include as much detail as you can.

Create a RFP (Request For Proposal)

Putting together a comprehensive RFP is a great way to go beyond a basic requirements document and fully detail all aspects of your website project.

RFPs do take some time to put together, but a few hours of putting together the document can save you hours of website development time and answering a lot of questions when discussing the project with your website designer.

Here are two sample Request For Proposal documents which you can download and adapt for your project:

Basic Website RFP Sample - .doc file, 3 pages, best for very basic website projects

Complex Website RFP Sample - .doc file, 8 pages, best for more complex website projects