Type of navigation: How to get from page to page, and what information ( how much or how little) gets put on what page. In our opinion this is where to start.

Look and feel of the Website, Graphics: What message is being conveyed, what type of "attitude" the Website puts out. This is a close second to navigation; the greatest looking, coolest site will not make up for the aggravation of not being able to get around.

Security Features: Determination of what levels of access are given to which pages on the site, and who gets clearance to these pages. Usually companies will have a single level of access and clearance (either authorized or not) on a page-wide level, with access gained through a login or other means. For more information on security visit the Knowledge base and sign up.

Customization: Ability to present the site differently to different users based on information gathered by the Website. What can be known about the user is actually very detailed. There are six types of information a website can "detect" from a user:
1) a login by the user
2) browser type detection and screen size
3) cookies (commonly misunderstood by many people)
4) detection of last site they clicked through from.
5) entry of the Site from a link received by email.
6) entry from a search engine or other directory listing
Your website pages should take advantage of that information to customize what is displayed and maxmize market potential.

Site Controls: How the user operates the navigation. Typically this is done through JavaScript. Considerations include dynamic dropdown lists (change a value, and you go instantly to the page for that value), menu-like layers, "sort by this column" commands at the top of a table, show-hide controls, etc. The entire purpose of this is to provide easy, intuitive navigation.

Database Scheme and Display: What tables of information a company will be maintaining. Most product-based companies will simply have a listing of their products; however there may also be tables for a customer list, news articles, and even for keeping tract of transactions. The more tables, the more complex the site will be.

User Site Modification: The ability of a user to control the content of a website in some way (for all other viewers), such as adding or editing a comment, creating a page of their own, signing a guest list, adding to a forum, etc.. Most commercial websites do not use this feature extensively. An example would be amazon.com, which allows users to rate and comment on books that they have read. Another example is a "sign my guest book" form that shows comments on the site. Expect for this type of feature to gain popularity on the web.

User Enrollment: The ability of a user to enter his/her information (name, email, etc.) in the Website's database in some form. Different from User Control as this does not change the appearance of the Website. Improves the Site Owner's ability to market and customize for the user.

User Enrollment Maintenance: The ability of a user to modify his or her own information, such as changing username or password, changing credit card number, changing which type of email articles he wishes to receive, etc.

XML Linking and Automation: This is a new concept on the web, but it is basically the existence of "hidden" features on the Site's pages which will allow data to be retrieved, automatic performance of a service, retrieval of information from a remote site, even automatic e-commerce transaction where the user's browser "talks" to the web page to make a sale without actually surfing to the page. Although this is in its infancy, we do everything possible to plan your Site around the growth of this concept. Investigate articles in our Knowledge Base under Automation.

Owner Admin: the ability of the site owner to control the content of the website or the database, download information, view statistics, etc. For a database-driven site the minimum admin needed is for the owner to maintain the database, thus keeping the web pages which use this info current.

Site Placement and Ranking: How the customer comes to you. This involves the ability of a site to be found on search engines or other locations. This process involves developing hidden attributes called keywords and descriptions on each page to assist search engines (which are type of automatic cataloguer) in determining the content of your site. In addition, it is possible to seek out other related associations and sites relating to your industry, which will be willing to list your Website's name and a link to it. We are able to achieve extremely good results in search engine placement.

Marketing: How you go to the customer. Unlike Radio, Television or Print, you have few options of contacting your client when he is not actually ON your Site or another site mentioning you. Unless the client has a live connection, the only current form of marketing available is via email. Email can be plain text or in HTML format, and can also provide links back to your site, even allowing the content of the site to change based upon the link provided in the email. It is also possible to track the effectiveness of an email campaign by monitoring how many emails have been responded to.

Additional methods of marketing are responsive marketing where the habits and pages of users are studied, and modifications made to the site accordingly. At Compass Point Media we are able to create the software necessary to perform this type of tracking and analysis.

Website Structure: How your web pages are organized on the web server. Where secure pages go, where archived files go, etc.. Important for future maintenance of site assets. There is no convention on folder layouts, but we believe eventually there will be a bent to that direction; we are keeping our eyes open for this.