Before plunging into any venture, a creative planning is essential, even website designing is no exception. It is important to take the time to plan exactly what is needed in the website and follow a series of planning steps to make sure your site is successful. It is applicable for creating a personal home page as well.

Purpose or Goals: A purpose statement should show focus based on what the website will accomplish and what the users will get from it. Note down the goals, so that they will be remembered during the design process. Setting short and long term goals for the website will help make the purpose clear and plan for the future when expansion, modification, and improvement will take place. Also, goal-setting practices and measurable objectives should be identified to track the progress of the site and determine success. A Web site that provides news about a specific subject should have a different look and navigation than a Web site that sells products. The complexity of the goals will affect the navigation, the media that is used and even the look and feel of the site.

Audience: The audience is the group of people who are likely to visit the website – the market being targeted. They will be watching the website for a specific reason and it is important to know exactly what they are looking for. A clearly defined purpose or goal of the site and an understanding of what visitors want to do/feel when they come to the site will help to identify the target audience. Clear knowledge of certain characteristics of the audience will allow an effective website to be created that will deliver the desired content to the target audience,

Content- Crucial: Collecting a list of the necessary content then organizing it according to the audience's needs is a key step in website planning. It is a good idea to test the content and purpose on a focus group and compare the offerings to the audience needs. The next step is to organize the basic information structure by categorizing the content and organizing it according to user needs. Each category should be named with a concise and descriptive title that will become a link on the website. Beautiful, colourful images may make a site attractive, but the content only determines whether the site is worthy of frequent visits.

Designing Site Plan: Initial design plan should be made simple and sight’s navigation plan clear. Choose a unique icon to act as a navigation symbol throughout the sight.Visitor should be able to move around the sight easily. Navigation should be consistent throughout the site. If a navigation bar is placed across the top of the home page, it might be kept there for all the linked pages. All secondary pages should link back to home page.

Legal Issues: All text, graphics, music and video clips are copyright protected. Only items found on a public domain site can be copied.
Organizing the site carefully from the start can save unnecessary frustration and time later on. A well-planned web sight will produce fruitful results.