The 5W’s(why, when, where, whose, who) and 1H(How) should be answerable and know before to the webmaster before the development of the website starts. Many of us don’t know how to start the designing and development and also from where to start. The webmaster should have an answer of all the questions related to the website, its area, its scope, target area and also complete knowledge of the technology to be used.

Below are the basic steps that every webmaster should follow.

1. Research- First research for websites related to your industry. Find who your competitors are and what kind of websites they have. Pen down the positive and negative aspects of their websites. This will help you in developing error free and user friendly website.

2. Identify your audience – Always keep in mind your target audience while developing your website. Make website that will motivate you audience and make them feel fresh and personal.

3. Gather Information – Gather complete information about the company whether it’s in electronic, print, web or any other forms. This will help you have better understanding about the company and you will be able to convey the message clearly.

4. Structure and Content - Once you have gathered information for you website, you need to structure that in good document format. Once done, you need to understand how you will structure the information and how the most important message has to be conveyed clearly. Try talking with general people from target audience how they would love to have site and what special feature and reason can bring them back to the site. The navigation and designing of the site should be simple and clear and well organized.

5. Design and Presentation

The website will have to be designed for maximum accessibility. Website is mostly a combination of text and graphics placed together. The designer should keep in mind the target people during the design process i.e.. whether text has to be given more emphasis or the graphics. Browser safe color palette should be used and only system fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma etc. should be used.

6. Domain Registration and Hosting: After the designing of the website, the same has to be uploaded to web server to be visible to others. For this a domain name needs to be registered. Care should be taken while choosing a domain name. Also space needs to be bought on web server to host the web pages. There are various web hosting providers who offer windows and linux web hosting services.

7. Making website visible: After the website is live its turn to make people know about its existence. There are different steps to market you website. You can use paid and free services. Try submitting your sites to different search engines for maximum exposure. You can even exchange links with other webmasters. Also the website can be submitted in various web directories.

8. Online Marketing- For promoting the website more online marketing is required. Prepare a strong marketing plan depending on the budget. Try to make the best use of free and paid link exchanges and also pay-per-click ads.

9. Tracking Performance – It’s very important to measure the success of the marketing you have been doing for your website. The goal conversion and the traffic on your website show the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts.

10. Measures to improve performance further – You should keep researching for steps that can be taken to improve further the performance of the site. Keep updating the sites with new add-ons and make your visitor feel special every time they visit your site.