The first step for a new project is to find the broad strokes. What should be the main sections? If the site is for an online store, how will the products be organized? What about colors, keywords and custom functionality needed?

It’s also the right time to define what your site’s domain name will be and how it will be hosted. If you are not sure where an existing domain is registered, then now is the time to track down that registration account. An existing hosting account can be evaluated for its ability to handle the new site. If a new hosting account is needed, then there are a few I can recommend.

Plotting out your site’s main sections, and sub-sections and how they will connect together gives everyone a roadmap going forward. While it won’t be something “set in stone”, knowing where the key areas of content are helps to save time on development.

Website design means more than finding a nice color scheme and some pretty pictures. While a site does need to visually engaging, it also needs to be attractive to search engines. The content needs to be easy to read for human eyes, but also easily scanned by search engine bots.

How will your content be laid out on a page? Will images and text be placed so that their relationship will be apparent no matter what device the page is viewed with?

Each aspect of your site’s appearance, color, typography, layout and image styles needs to tell a story. When someone goes to your site, they should immediately get a sense of what that page is about and easily be able to find the information they are looking for.

Your site’s visual design should be enhanced by its functionality. Whether you are starting out with a five page website with a basic contact form, or an e-commerce site with all the bells and whistles, all the moving parts need to function together as a whole. Being able to choose applications that will play nice together takes experience and having that knowledge of what works and what doesn’t really pays off.

As your site is created, all its moving parts are continually tested and evaluated for functionality as well as compatibility. Also, any third party capability such as creating a feed to a CRM service, or embedding activity from a Facebook page can be installed and checked so your site’s users have the best experience possible.

When it comes to unleashing your site on the world wide web are you a dandelion or an oak tree? Dandelions scatter their seeds on the wind and have a short life span. Oak trees propagate by creating symbiotic relationships with animals that eat their seeds and develop deep roots to ensure their presence on the landscape.

Simply launching your new site onto the world and hoping for the visitors to find you is not a sustainable strategy. Your site needs to build its reputation with search engines over time as well as its relationships with other sites. Having a solid SEO strategy it like having a deep root system. It takes time, but pays off in strong and steady growth.