One of the most fundamental aspects of business success is the planning. Especially when it comes to your website and how it connects to your business targets.
Whether you’re doing it all yourself or working with a professional organisation, you can’t move forward with your website without planning your course of action.
There are an assortment of variables to consider when creating a website. Essential considerations you need to take into account are:
- Target audience
Knowing your audience is the best approach when starting to build your website. Think about who will be using your website, and make sure it is structured towards the demographic of your potential customers. It can also help to carry out competitor analysis. Sometimes looking at competitors’ websites can highlight aspects that you want to steer clear of for your own.
- A framework built for your customers
Lay down the foundations of your website and build it from there. Start with a simple wireframe, or site map, of the most important content you want customers to find on your website. Plan the customer journey from landing pages, to links that lead to intuitive features. Don’t make it too hard for your customers to find the information they’re looking for – a simplistic approach works well for the majority of websites.
- Know what you want and plan accordingly for it
What do you want your customers to gain from your website? Whether it’s to read customer reviews or blogs, purchase products, or act purely as an informational and knowledge-based site – whatever the case may be, make sure your website is clear and innovative to use. Use visual banners to lead to the sections of the website you want to focus on. The focus can change periodically depending on your business goals but you have to start somewhere.
- Future site evolution
Having a wireframe of your site can also help with planning for future site evolution. For example if you know that you need payment features at some point in the future or you want to show customer reviews when you start getting them in, then having a wireframe can help you plan where potential space can be developed at a later point in time.
Website planning may sound like a long drawn out process
When all you want to do is get your website up and running, planning is a step you need to take to ensure the success of your website.
Without planning, vital features can be missed and can end up costing you more money to correct, rather than creating an initial design that can accommodate changes you may need to make once your website evolves.
How Marketing Square can help you
Let us help you plan your website. We take the hard work out of it by doing upfront planning. We create a round of site maps and wireframes, and create a brief that we work on that outlines your goals, brand concepts and outcomes you expect from the website.
We work towards a project timeframe and keep you in the loop at all times so you know how your website is developing.