Web Designer - STEP 3 to start website

OK, finding a web designers could actually be STEP 1 if you are very, very new to the idea of getting a website. The web designer you choose could help you through STEP 1 (choosing a domain name) and STEP 2 (choosing a hosting company). However, it's STEP 3 for those who know about getting domain names and finding a host. Also the major part of the webdesigner's work comes after the domain and host are set up.

Let's get into finding a webdesigner now.

The first thing you need to do is write down what functionalities you need in your website. Get a fresh notepad and a pen. Yeah, I mean it. Don't just start thinking of what you want in your website in your head. Get a notepad and a pen. Let me stress that.
GET A NOTEPAD AND A PEN.

OK, that' s better.

Write down the word "FUNCTIONALITIES" at the top of one of the pages in your notepad.
Now you are going to start putting numbers and writing down what you want.

By the way, when we talk about functionality it we are not talking about the pictures you want on your site or the size of the text or the colors you would like on your site. By functionality we mean, how your website should interact with the customers who visit your website.

If you want a simple non-ecommerce site that just talks about your services/products but doesn't charge credit card online or anything else that requires your customers to write anything then the work is pretty simple. These simple websites don't have a lot of functionlities (technically speaking).

For other types of sites, like a shopping cart site you will need to figure out what your shopping cart sites should have.

Let's do an example to understand functionality better. Let's say you want to sell sporting goods online. One of the items you sell is lets say soccer t-shirts. Now, a particular T-shirt can come in varieties of colors and sizes. Let's say this soccer T-shirt comes in 3 different sizes (large, medium and small) and for each size their are 5 different colors (red, green, blue, white and black)
So in you functionalities you want to write down
"At least 2 attributes for some products like T-shirt".
Your website should not display this T-shirt as 15 different items.
It should not say "Soccer T-shirt, red, large", "Soccer T-shirt, blue, small", "Soccer T-shirt, green, large"......etc.
It should simply be one item "Soccer T-shirt" with 2 different attributes - size and color.

Now if you think deeper, some of your other items also might have these same attributes (color and size), but they might come in more varieties. e.g., Soccer shoes also come in different sizes like T-shirt, but soccer shoes will not be as simple as small, medium and large. Soccer shoes are likely to be 'size 5, size 6, size 7, size 8, size 9, size 10'...etc.

I hope you got my point there.

Another example of funtionality.
You might want your customer to get a discount of 10% if they purchase more than 5 T-shirt at a once and a discount of 14% if they buy more than 10 T-shirt.
But you also want 5% discount if they purchase more than 2 soccer shoes and 10% discount if they buy more than 5 shoes.
This is easy if you are just going to mention this on your site but it's difficult if you want your website to automatically calculate these options in.

I guess you got the idea of what I meant by functionality now.
One thing I would highly suggest you to do is to search for your products on Google, Yahoo and MSN and do a little research by browsing around these other (perhaps your competitor) sites.

Don't forget to write down the URL (website address) of the sites you liked for a certain functionality or even colors and graphics. You will want to mention it to your webdesigner ultimately.

Now let's find the webdesigner.
continued in the next post.....