Website Planning Guide
So you've decided you need a new website, or that it's time to make significant revisions to an existing one. Now what? Here are some questions to consider.
1) What are your goals for the website, and are they measurable?
Whatever your business, think hard about what a website can really do for you, and then think of ways (or ask us about ways) that you can measure progress. Contacts via an online form, newsletter signups, calls via a web-only 800 number, online sales, percentage increase in online traffic: these are all measurable goals.
2) What websites do you like?
The best thing you can do to prepare your own website is to look at others, especially those in your field. We ask new clients to give us the URLs of at least 3 websites they like the look of. There are many "best practices" for web site design, and it's our job to communicate those to you and assure that your web site employs them. But much of design is simply what the client likes, so conveying those likes is important.
3) Do you have a logo or any other graphics to work with?
A logo will strongly influence web site design, both in terms of color and overall look and feel. If you don't have any product photos or other illustrative material, you might want to look for some stock photos to give your site more visual interest. Take a look at some Web Design Resources that we've posted to help get you started.
4) What information do you want to include?
Develop an outline of the pages you'd like to have on your website (often called a sitemap). Here's a sample:
- Home page
- Products
- Product Category A
- Product Category B
- About Us
- Contact Us
Most websites will have more pages than this, and the more pages you have, the better—both for your visitors and the search engines (although it's also true that larger sites are more expensive to build).
The Home Page should state in simple, brief language what you do. It's amazing how many websites don't do this.
The About Us page should tell enough about you to build trust and credibility, and whenever possible, give a "human face" to your web presence.
The Contact Us page should include all ways to contact you: physical address, directions, email address, phone number(s). We like to use a contact form here because it makes tracking web inquiries much easier, but you should give your visitors every possible way of contacting you.
The other pages will largely be determined by your type of business, available materials, and goals.
We almost always assist clients in organizing and editing copy. The structure of a website is very important and our optimization work often involves suggestions about text content. Nevertheless, clients who can present their materials in an organized and thorough way at the outset of a project save time and money.
5) Who can you get to link to your website?
Chances are you know of some companies or organizations right now that already link to you or would be willing to do so. Make a list. These might include:
- professional organizations
- membership organizations (such as chambers of commerce)
- colleagues
- vendors and suppliers
6) Do you have a domain name?
If not, start researching good candidates on one of the domain registrar sites. See our Web Design Resources for a link.
7) Future maintenance needs
As you think about the copy you have now, and what you would like to have in the future, think also about how you will be updating the site. Is this something that you wish to outsource, or is it critical for your workflow that you be able to make updates yourself?