10 Website Planning Essentials

Before you start designing your website, read this for a 10-step website planning system, that tells you what to build, who you’re building it for, and how to measure your business’s success.

1.  Define Your Website Goals

First things first: Ask yourself why you’re creating a website. What will be its main reason for existing? Are you planning to grow your small business? Or are you wanting to write blogs about subjects all relating to one concept? Is this going to be the place where you showcase your portfolio? Or are you planning to start an online store and sell items?

Whatever your answer is will help you with the way forward. Once you know why, it’s time to start making goals to reach that decision:

How to set goals you’re likely to follow:

• Don’t give a vague goal, like “I would like more traffic”. Rather set a goal that is more specific, like, “I want to attract 75 new leads every month”.
• Use numbers as we have done above.
• Set a timeline, for instance “within the next month/three months”.
• Work out the type of results you’d like to achieve, e.g. “50 more customers in the next six months”.

It’s always easier to track your progress if you have set goals in place.

Now it’s time to act on those goals. Work out what you need if you’re writing blogs or setting up an online store. Be clear about what you need to do and then act on it.

2.  Identify Your Target Audience

When you started your small business, you likely worked out who your audience is, i.e. the people you’re talking to and selling to. Remember: to be successful, your website must be aimed specifically at those who you’re designing it for. You must understand who these potential customers or clients are, so you can ensure you give them exactly what they want. And you also need to talk to them accordingly and connect with them.

So, how do you work out who this specific group of people is that will be your customers?

• Do research.
• Once you know who your audience is, then find out what they want and give it to them.
• Work out how these people will enjoy interacting with you on your website pages, then design your site accordingly.
• Still unsure? Study competitors in your niche to see what they are doing. See what they aren’t doing, and give that to your customers as well.
• With all this information, create a persona, or avatar, of each of the people who you define as your customers, or who you want to be your customers. Make these characters real. Give them an age, a place where they live, an occupation. Work out their likes and dislikes. Decide on their problems, their goals and how they behave online. With this information, you’re ready to communicate with them.

3.  So, What’s Your Unique Value?

The most important thing you need to do is make your website stand out from your competitors. Your unique value is what will make that happen. Perhaps your content is totally original. Maybe you’re offering something nobody else has offered in your niche. Or your service is a little faster than anyone else’s. It might be that you’re the expert in giving customers exactly what they want. You need to define what sets you apart.

Then you need to advertise these traits:

• Tell your customers what you do, for instance, delivering within three hours or days of placing an order.
• Ensure that what you offer isn’t provided by any of your competitors.
• Ask your customers why they choose you over anyone else, then advertise this.

Remember: Don’t make a promise if you can’t keep it. Be consistent. Always. Find a way to solve your customers biggest problems.

4.  Choose A Memorable Website Name

Your website name, or domain, must be something simple and easy to remember. Your domain is your website’s address, so choose something that’s short, easy to spell and memorable. Don’t make it long, complicated or difficult to memorise. Once the customer types in your address, you need a host so that your customer can reach it.

When it comes to hosting, choose the best option for your specific website:

• Shared hosting: This is great if you’re a small business, and it’s inexpensive. As its name implies, you share hosting with other websites.
• VPS hosting: This will provide more control over your site, and it performs better as your business gets bigger.
• Managed WordPress hosting: It’s specifically designed for sites using WordPress to add content. It’s also designed to be fast and secure, and is regularly updated.

5.  The Best Website Platform for Your Site

You need a website designing platform that is easy to use, manage and change as your site grows. Of course, this depends on your website, your skill set, budget and goals.

If you’re new to website building, find a platform that is fast, simple to use and requires no coding, perhaps one that allows you to drag and drop pages easily. Otherwise, use a platform like WordPress, which is extremely popular, and for good reason. This CMS (Content Management System) powers millions of sites online and offers numerous plugins and themes you can use to make your site stand out from the crowd.

If you are very specific about what you want, you can choose custom coding, which gives you full control when you build your site. However, you will require coding knowledge for this, unless you hire a professional developer who does the work for you.

6.  Structuring & Designing a Site

If you plan your website well, visitors will be able to find everything they’re looking for with ease. So, the best way to build a site is to structure it properly with a site map, an outline of what you’re creating and how the different pages will connect with each other. Most sites first build the important pages, like About, Services, Contact, and Blog. This helps visitors navigate the site. Always group related pages together and use submenus only when required so that everything is easy to find.

To keep branding consistent throughout, use the same style, fonts, colours and logos. This keeps your site looking professional and makes customers trust it. You also ensure visitors have a smooth journey when they visit and navigate your site.

7.  Creating Content

One of the most crucial parts of a website is content, which is how you communicate with your visitors and prospective customers. What you say will decide how people understand who you are, what you sell and whether they should trust you or not. Knowing your audience takes you halfway there; telling them what they want to hear, such as how to solve their problems and make their lives better, is the other half. Make everything you communicate clear and concise, to ensure people visiting are encouraged to act.

Of course, different pages have different content:

• The Homepage introduces you to the site and the brand, and tells visitors how to reach the section they’re interested in.
• The About page gives you details about your business and your brand, what your values are and how you operate.
• Services pages tell people about the services you offer. If you have a store, they will also feature product descriptions, short summaries highlighting each product you sell.
• Blog pages teach customers about your products and services, and your focus, whether it’s to be sustainable, educational, helpful, useful, etc.
• A review or testimonial offers an honest idea of how other customers have reacted to your products and services.

When you do write content, consider how search engines will react to it. Use keywords, short, simple titles and paragraphs to help pages rank higher in SEO. If you can, assist SEO with meta descriptions, alt text describing images, and internal links.

8.  Focus on UX (User Experience)

Your website must be enjoyable, educational, simple to browse through. In other words, you want your audience to have a good user experience. Anything that’s difficult to read, or that frustrates readers, will ensure they don’t return. A good UX ensures people stay longer on the site, interact more with it, perhaps even purchase while they’re there, and return to do all of this once more.

Here are some simple ways to ensure this happens;

•  Your website must be able to read on different-sized screens. Most importantly, as people use their phones or tablets most often these days, ensure the site design is mobile-responsive.
•  Design pages so that the text is simple to read, images load quickly and buttons are easy to tap.
•  Make travelling through your site a happy journey. Menus must be simple and easy to use, and if you have a store, ensure everything (choices, payment, queries) can be executed quickly and simply.

9.  Use the Right Features

These include:

• Chat that is easy to find, so customers can ask questions.
• Contact forms that are simple to fill in.
• On your store, make shopping carts, product pages and payment as simple and quick as possible.
• With an online store, ensure you have security in place to keep customer’s information secure and private. For this, you need an SSL certificate.
• Back up your site regularly to protect it.
• Ensure pages load quickly and easily.

10.  Launching, Testing, & Improvements

Before you launch, do the following:

• Test all links are correct.
• Ensure all forms work correctly and are quick and easy to fill in.
• Test your site on every size screen and ensure it loads and looks good on tablets and phones.
• Use tools to measure performance and SEO.
• One you go live, ask users how they experience browsing through it, and whether it’s simple to use or should be worked on. This information will help you make improvements.