What should be the focus of my website?

The lesson of the day is again on the topic of how to develop a website from scratch using currently available technologies.  In particular, we will cover answering the following question:

“What should be the focus of my website?”

This isn’t exactly a technical question but since you will need to know the answer before proceding I figured at least one post should be focused on this topic.  There are an infinite number of possible answers to this question as is already shown by the diversity of the web.  So, in my opinion, the best way to approach this question is to brainstorm through answering the following questions.  Feel free to skip any questions you don’t find useful or adding questions based on your own experiences (If you do add questions and feel like contributing to this work, post a comment with your question and I’ll add it to the list.).  So read through the questions and write down the first things that come to your mind as you are reading them.  Then, go through them again taking a little more time with each one and again writing down your answers.  Finally, go over your answers and hopefully it will become obvious what your site will be. 

There are typically two types of sites – Those that provide information about a topic and Those that provide a service.  To help focus your brainstorming, I’ve broken done the questions into three groupings 1) General Questions, 2) Questions for Informational Sites and 3) Questions for Service Oriented Sites.

General Questions:

• Are you developing this site based on your ideas or someone else’s? (If it is someone else’s ideas make sure to keep that in mind when answering the rest of the questions and you may want to go through this process with them adding input as well)
• How much time do you have to work on your site?
• Do you want to do something associate with work or completely different?
• Who else might want to help out?
• What was your favorite subject in school?  Why?
• What is your favorite television show, book, game, sport, activity… Why?

Informational Sites:

• What would you do if you never had to work again?
• What are your favorite things to do?
• What could you talk about for days?
• What are you better at than anyone else?
• What do you love more than anything else?
• What topics are your friends and/or coworkers always asking you for advice on?
• Name the first 10 things that come to your mind?
• What are 10 things that you could write a page about right now?

Service Oriented Sites:

What is the most annoying thing about the internet?
What is the most annoying thing you need to do every day?
Do you have a solution to a common problem? 
Do you have a client in mind?  If so, what are their needs?
What type of service do you want to provide?
Are their any shortcuts you have found for tideous tasks?
What is your favorite thing to do with your friends? Why? Can you create a site that would allow you to do any of these on-line?
What is your least favorite thing to do? Can you create a site that provides users with a way of getting this done for them?

Now that you have gone through a little brainstorming, here is a final thought -

If you don’t love your idea, find a different one.  Ideas are great (and easy to come by…) but the hard part is sticking with it through the difficult times all the way through to completion.  But, if you are truly passionate about your idea, no distractions or sticking points will be able to keep you from taking your idea all the way from conception to inception.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Computer Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.