Having a business website is vital for any business of today. Whether you are an online business owner or a business owner with a physical store, it would really benefit your business if you have a website that your customers can visit. There are many benefits to having a business website. Thus, as a business owner, you would want to really put time and effort into making one of your own. This is where website planning, website content, and website builders come in. In this article, we will talk about all that and telling you all about how to plan a website for your business.
10 Steps to Website Planning
1. Define Your Purpose
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
In identifying how to plan a website, start with the definition of your website’s purpose. It will always be a good idea to start your website planning with the identification of what you want your website to be all about. You would want to know the purpose of why you are creating this website. This would help you in proceeding to your next steps. Ultimately, it will become the foundation of your website. This is where you should go back to and base every decision you make going forward. The purpose of your website should be what you have in mind while putting in your website content. Therefore, this is the first step to website planning.
2. Do Your Research
Another important aspect of how to plan a website is to do your research. Research about the products or services that you plan to feature on your website. Research about the industry you are diving into. Know the different ins and outs of the business. Make sure that you build an understanding of what you will need for a website with the purpose you set. Research what elements and what kind of information are necessary for you to have and display. It is also important that you research the competitors that you have. It is important so that you can establish a website plan that would be on par or, better yet, that would be better than your own competitors. Benchmarking is a good step to include when you plan a website for your business.
3. Identify Target Audience
![DMC Target audience Strikingly Site]( "DMC Target audience Strikingly Site")
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
In any business plan, knowing your niche market is important. Knowing who you’re creating it for would give you a better understanding of the kind of website content that you have to include. It will also tell you how to layout your website according to this target audience. Often, when business owners are thinking about how to plan a website for their business, they forget about the fact that creating a customer persona is a vital step. Understanding the perspective of your target market and producing website content and a website plan according to that would give a higher chance of success. Because ultimately, websites can’t be deemed as the best if they are not optimized according to the desired target audience. If your website does not connect with your audience, then it won’t make much of a difference for your business.
4. Know How to Secure a Domain
A domain is what would be the address of your website. It will be its home. And it is also exclusive for every website. Thus, as you plan your website, you must already have a domain name in mind. Then you should also look for and try to understand how you can secure that domain for your website. This is not often part of website planning. When you think about how to plan a website, it is not often focused on something that will be done after your website is created. Nevertheless, we think that this is a vital step because your plan would eventually only be successful after you have secured and registered your website to a domain. So it only makes sense that in knowing how to plan a website, you include knowing about how to secure a domain.
5. Learn About SEO Techniques
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Search engine optimization techniques are vital to learn about when you are figuring out how to plan a website. When you come up with a website plan, it should involve making sure that every website content that you list down or put out is optimized for search engines. SEO is a vital part of building your website because without optimization of your website, you would have a hard trouble making a mark. Your potential customers would have a hard time finding you because search engines are not showing your website immediately. Thus, your website planning should be injected with the SEO techniques.
6. Look for Inspiration and Opportunities
In knowing how to plan a website, it is useful to browse through different websites of similar nature as yours. It is vital that you have an understanding about the websites that are already on the market. You can derive information and inspiration from various websites that you can find. Be careful not to copy their styles or layout. Just note what you’ve noticed to be working for multiple websites so you can include in your website plan how you think these things could apply to your website. As you are browsing through these different websites, you can also think about what they lack or what they can improve on and apply it to your website. Website planning can involve setting yourself apart from your competitors by studying their own websites and identifying what you can offer that they aren’t offering.
7. Describe Your Content
As early as the website planning stage, you have to have an idea about the website content you want to produce. There are many kinds of websites and website content you can choose from. There is always a kind of website content that is right for each kind of website. And in knowing how to plan a website, you have to describe early on in the process what kind you think would work best for your website. This usually makes up a big part of your website plan. Because as you go through your lists, you would want to be as detailed as possible. If you are thinking about adding videos, you can already list down what videos you would produce and what they would be about. If you are thinking about putting images, describe what subjects you would need and how you would get them. Your website content is the star of your website, so try to make it relevant and engaging. You would also want to layout the website plan for your layout. Web design relies heavily not just on the elements you put in but also on the way you layout your website. So make some notes about that too.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
8. Identify What You Will Need
For this next step on how to plan a website, we want you to think about the other resources that you think your website and/or your business would need. This can be elements such as the links, images, information, etc. that are primary to your website. But in website planning, you also have to consider elements beyond your website. That is, give a thought about integrating social media onto your website or partnering with other businesses. This puts an item on your website plan and would help remind you about the other things outside of your website builder you should also give attention to. This could be about getting your social media accounts ready, and planning how to get the word out about your website. If you can identify early on in your website planning these other things you would need, then it would make your job easier in the long run.
9. Research about Necessary Website Features
While each website varies in forms and elements, there are website features that are just a staple for every website. You should know this when you start to know how to plan a website. Some of the necessary website content are SEO settings, contact forms, display of contact information, product descriptions, prices, and call to action buttons. All of which are vital if you want your website to be effective in bringing in customers. In addition, you can also add Google Maps, a live chat feature, and even a social media feed. You don’t have to worry about fitting into all other types of websites. What’s important is that you do not forget to include all the elements that would really help your website be accommodating for your customers.
10. Decide on What Tool to Use
Finally, you must decide on the website builder that you should use. If you are well-skilled and knowledgeable about coding and the likes, you can find a website builder that would allow you to do that. You can indeed build your website and execute your website plan from scratch. However, there are also a lot of website builders today that you can use if you are just starting out. When you have little experience in making websites, you can use different templates that these website builders offer. You can go on from there and bring your website plan from paper to online code. What matters most is that the website builder you would choose really works well for you and really helps you in building your website.
Image taken from Strikingly Product
To finish this list of how to plan a website, we want to introduce you to Strikingly. This is a website builder that makes your job easier. You don’t even need to have any background knowledge about coding and HTML. You just have to have your website plan on hand, and Strikingly will help you execute and make your plan a reality. Sign up now and be a part of the community of website builders and owners that are conquering the world!
