One of the key goals to planning your website is to determine the purpose of your site and who will be your target audience. These steps are essential for you to figure out how to plan your site, so let's first decide what your goals are.

Let's first talk about the purpose of your site. Is it educational, commercial, political or personal? What is the image or message you want to convey? Do you want to sell a product, recruit volunteers, get donations or sway someone's vote or how they feel about a certain issue? How do you want people to feel when they are through looking at your website? What do you want them to remember? Is there an identity you want to convey? Any particular colors that would be appropriate?

All of these questions should be answered first to give you a feel for what you want your website to accomplish and to determine your website's purpose.

Next, let's look at your target audience. Are they families, kids, single men, single women, married couples, and what age group? Do they represent a specific group such as hobbiests, tourists, folks looking for a product or to be informed or just for a bit of information? Are they members of your local community, city, county, state, country or the world? Are they successful and wealthy or maybe a struggling student? What is their income level? Do they spend money wisely or are do they spend at the drop of a hat? Are they computer savy or are computers a source of mystery to them?

The answers to these questions let you know who you are dealing with and how your website should be built. Should it be simple and easy or very complicated and deep? Will they have state of the art computers or will they be working off an older machine on a dial-up modem? When you put these two categories together and fully comprehend your website's purpose and your target audience, you can begin the design process.