4 Essential Steps to Take Before Designing Your New Website
Designing a website for your business requires careful preparation and thought. Before diving into the design process, and even choosing the right platform, there are four essential steps that need to be taken: defining the goal(s) of your website, getting clear on your audience, determining your site structure, and mapping out the steps. Taking these steps will help you create a solid foundation on your journey to designing an effective and successful website.
Now let’s go into a bit of detail about each section.
01 Defining the goal(s) of your website
One of the most important things to consider when creating your own online space is why your website exists and what you want to happen once it’s live. This is a crucial step in the process because it helps you stay focused throughout the project by directing your decisions and informing the design process. For example, let’s say you want to increase your online sales revenue. This means that you should be looking for a website platform that can support your eCommerce goals and perhaps start looking at investing in product photography.
When choosing goals for your website, think short-term (next 6 - 12 months) and long-term (2 - 5 years). Narrow in on 1-3 top goals and use the S.M.A.R.T framework to get even more clear:
Specific: keep the goal direct, detailed, and meaningful
Measurable: how will you measure this goal and know if you are successful?
Attainable: be realistic with your goals and acknowledge where you are currently at
Relevant: make sure the goal is specific to you and your business
Time-Based: set a deadline for your goal and even set dates to check in with how you’re progressing
Here are some examples of website goals:
Increase the number of site visitors
Improve/Increase engagement
Grow your email list
Increase online sales revenue
Build trust and establish your credibility in your field
Inspire people to comment on blog posts
02 Getting Clear On Your Ideal Customer
Your ideal customer is the person who your services/products are meant for. They are the reason you do the work that you do and it’s this person who you are going to be crafting your website to appeal to.
A useful exercise in getting clear on your ideal customer is to create a Buyer Persona (also called a Customer Avatar). A Buyer Persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer and is created using a combination of market research and the experience you’ve had with your existing clients. The idea is to categorize your clientele into different personas (whether that be only one or 2, 3 etc. depending on your business) based on a few different factors:
Demographics
Age, gender, income, location
Goals & Values
What is their biggest professional/personal goal?
What are their top priorities?
What are their interests?
What are they most passionate about?
Challenges/Pain Points
What challenges are they facing?
What is their biggest pain point?
Sources of Information
What books do they read?
What websites do they visit?
What magazines do they read?
What social media channels are they on?
Tip: You might even want to give your persona a name and find a photo that represents them to make them feel even more real.
Analyzing who your potential visitors are and their habits on the web will have a great deal of influence on the content you create for your website as well as the final look and feel of the site. Remember, they are the reason you are doing this in the first place.
03 Determine Your Site Structure
Once you have identified your goals and are clear on your ideal customer, it’s time to start thinking about what pages should be included on your website and how they will be linked together.
A few obvious pages that you are going to want to include are:
Homepage: one of the most important pages on your website is the homepage. This is the page that visitors see when they type in or land on your domain name.
About page: the aim of your about page should be to provide more details about who you are and/or the people behind your company. This is typically the second most viewed page on your website because visitors want to know who they are going to be working with.
Service(s)/Product(s) page: this is where you list the details about the service(s)/products(s) that you provide. If you want to go into more detail about each of your services(s)/product(s) consider making this just a landing page with additional links to learn more about each service/product.
Contact page: your contact page shows website visitors the ways they can connect with you. Include important information that you are comfortable disclosing publicly like phone number, business address, and hours of operation. Include a contact form with relevant fields rather than disclosing your email address for spam prevention purposes.
How do you know what other pages you should be creating? Take what you know about your ideal customer, and put yourself in their shoes. What information would they want to know before doing business with you? For example, if you are providing in-person appointments, let visitors know what to expect during the appointment, how to prepare, and make it easy for them to book the appointment. Think of your website as a front-line team member in your company, providing information and answering as many questions as possible so you don’t have to.
If you are feeling stuck, here are a few additional page ideas:
FAQ
Testimonials/Reviews
Blog
Resource Library
Recommendation Pages
Events/Workshops
Portfolio
Your Process
Press/As Seen In
Careers
Image Gallery
Courses (Free or Paid)
eCommerce Related (Shipping, Returns, Size Guides, etc)
At the end of this step, you should have a list of pages that you need to create content for. If you have an existing website, make sure to go through the pages that are currently on your website and identify pages that need to be created (and perhaps deleted if they are no longer serving your goals).
04 Map Out Your Implementation Steps
Now it’s time to take a high-level view of the project and make notes of all the steps that need to happen in order to bring your website to life.
To help you with this section, here are a few key steps that typically have to happen with every website:
Purchase a domain name
Decide on a platform (and perhaps if it’s needed, decide on a hosting provider)
Map out your site architecture
Create content and source imagery for all the pages on your website
Gather all your branding files (logo, brand guidelines, font files)
Make sure you are clear on the colours and fonts you’ll be using
Start adding content to the website platform you have chosen
Final testing before making the website live
Create launch images to post on social media when the website becomes live
Launch your new website!
Depending on your situation, you might also want to add these to your list:
Hire a photographer for site imagery
Write and design opt-in offer
Sign up for an email marketing platform
Figure out shipping rates
I’m going to be going into more detail about most of these steps in future blog posts so if you're not completely sure about the implementation steps needed in your scenario, I’ve got you. For now, I just want you to reflect on what you think needs to be done in order to make your website live. If anything, this step will show you how ready you are to embark on this project solo and whether it might make sense to hire support.
Website Content Worksheet
A guided walk through of how to create and prepare content for the critical pages of your new website.
