Website planning forces you to clarify the exact website you want to build.
Planning means you don’t waste time and money during the building process.
A clear website plan will make it much easier to get an accurate website quote, because web designers will know precisely what you want. Your web designer will also be able to give you a more accurate timeline for your build because they will know how much work there is to be done. You’ll know upfront if you will need to engage additional service providers, like graphic designers or copywriters, or additional services like social media marketing or SEO.
Most importantly, you can decide on your website objectives upfront. This means you will know what you want your site to do, what you need to track, and how to tell whether your website is performing correctly.
Website planning is a critical step when building or revamping your website. It should be thorough, clear, and complete, before moving on to anything else.
Website planning should happen BEFORE looking for a website quote
Websites can be many different things. Your website could be a small 5-page site that acts as your online brochure and isn’t updated regularly, or it could be a massive online shop with many customisations. These 2 examples demonstrate that the amount of work that goes into building a website can vary greatly. Small sites are easy to build and don’t take long.
Larger sites with more moving parts and customisations will likely take longer to build and require more custom software. These factors determine the cost of your website. As such, it’s useless asking a designer for a website quote before you have a clear plan of what your website will include.
If a website designer doesn’t have a concise plan to quote from, they will probably do one of two things: underquote or overquote you. If they underquote, they will probably get annoyed as they soon begin to feel taken advantage of, and the quality of their work (and your new website) could suffer.
Alternatively, they could overquote, and you could end up paying far more than is necessary so the designer can make sure they are not out of pocket on a web build job. I have seen designers forced into quoting and randomly double their price if they suspect the site is going to be larger than the client describes. The designer can see trouble coming and rather than take the time to help their new customer plan their website in detail, they cover themselves with a massive quote.
If you are the client in this situation, you are going to suffer wither way. Your website is likely to end up shoddy and useless, or you would overpay for something that might have worked out a lot cheaper if you had taken the time to plan.
If you plan correctly, you’ll get fewer surprises
Surprises during a website build most often mean one thing for the client – extra expenses.
If a website isn’t planned fully, you might realise halfway through that you forgot an important component. This extra functionality might need an additional plugin, and it might be a paid plugin. Now you need to pay for an extra plugin every year that you weren’t expecting.
Extra functionality also means additional development time, which your website designer will want to charge you for. You could find yourself in the painful position of having to find extra budget you didn’t intend to spend.
Better website planning means a more accurate time estimate
You probably have a preferred publication date in mind when you decide you need a new website. Your launch date could be advertised extensively across social media and email newsletters, and you might struggle to change this date once the message has been sent to your audience.
The last thing you want to do is to extend this time. However, if you decide sometime during the web build that you actually need more than what your originally asked for (more pages, more content, more functionality, more graphics, more video etc.), this deadline might fly right out of the window.
These elements take time to create, and a rushed job is often very noticeable and can tarnish what would have been a beautiful, functional website.
If your website plan is accurate, then a designer can give a far more accurate estimate of the time it will take to complete. You will be able to market this date more confidently and deliver on your promise to your client. Sure – things go wrong, and they need to be fixed, but a good web designer is building THAT extra time into their estimate. They are likely NOT building in extra time for things that they never expected at all.
A well-executed website plan will mean you can most likely go live (publish your website) on the date you intended, without any catastrophes along the way.
Decide your website objectives upfront so you can meet them
Why are you getting a new website built? What do you want to achieve with the exercise?
- Are you trying to generate more leads?
- Are you trying to take some of the workload off your office staff by making more information or processes available on your website?
- Are you trying to sell more product?
It’s incredibly important to answer these questions during the planning phase of your website build. You must know what you want your website to achieve, so you know what must be built to get your result. You also need to decide how you will track these results so you can check to see whether the objectives have been met.
How will you know if your website is working?
If you’ve decided on your website objectives, and have chosen a way for your website to meet them, how will you know if your methods are working?
That’s where website tracking comes in.
Tracking is an interesting topic and can be a simple process (I sold 1000 products) or more complicated (I lost 100 people who abandoned their cart after adding one product).
Tracking product sales is easy in the native WordPress / Woocommerce setup, but complete ecommerce tracking from adding a product to the cart, abandoning the cart or checkout page, or failing the checkout, are more time-consuming setups. They require extra coding and extra work, and therefore a higher quote.
You can track almost every element on your website, but some tracking is more complicated than other types. A good website designer wants to know your tracking requirements so they can include them accurately in their quote.
Anyone can build a website, but not everyone can build a website that achieves its goals. You don’t know what these goals are or how you could achieve them without first planning them out, devising a solution to meet them, and tracking your results.
Your website success lies in the tracking, so you can see if your website is working like you want it to.
Is your website plan too big to build all at once?
Let’s assume you have created your website plan, but you are now staring at a much larger project than you had anticipated. One way to stay true to your original requirements is to split your plan into phases.
The phased approach to building a website is really useful because you can reduce your upfront costs, spread the total cost over a longer time period, and ease the pressure to supply all your content upfront.
It’s far easier to split a project into smaller pieces when you know what the total project entails. There are natural breaks in a website build, and these breaks can be turned into phases, and therefore paid for and implemented separately, on a much longer timeframe.
Example:
Phase 1: Build initial 5-page information website
This will get all the basics in place like the domain registration, hosting, branding and design of the website. It will also give you a place to send your clients when they ask about your website, and give you brand credibility.
Phase 2: Add an online shop
A new shop means you can add your products online, setup and streamline your shipping procedures, arrange your payment gateway, and start to sell.
Phase 3: Introduce Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimising your website so it’s more easily found on the organic search results on search engines (like Google). SEO is an ongoing project that needs to be nurtured, tracked, and adjusted when needed.
Phase 4: Add a blog
Adding a blog will greatly enhance your SEO results, but will require you to generate new content on a regular basis. Your SEO consultant will work with you to decide what content to generate that will best serve your website and your audience.
Phase 5: Add more website pages
By this stage, you will probably have a lot more to say about your company and its services or products. Now you can add all this content to your main website pages to better inform your customer and enhance their experience of your website.
These phases can go on for as long as you need or want, but these four are a good example of how phasing a website project can work.
Choose your marketing strategy early
Too many people build a website first and, only once it’s live, do they consider how to market it. This is why websites sit dormant for so long – no one is pushing any traffic their way!
If you have a website plan and you know what you want your website to do, you can start your marketing efforts early. This way, people are eager to visit it when it does go live.
Different target markets and different website objectives require different marketing strategies. An older demographic might prefer email marketing or Facebook ads. A younger demographic might respond better to TikTok. You could have a mix of social media marketing, influencer marketing, email newsletters, email marketing journeys, TV ads, radio ads, or adverts on other websites. It all depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
Remember that lots of marketing strategies are paid. You might want to buy ads on different platforms. You’ll need to include these purchases in your overall budget. You might also need customised tracking to check ad ROI. Make sure you include these costs too!
Search engine optimisation is generally required in websites now and this strategy must be included in your website planning. It’s an extra expense and a longterm project, but if done correctly, SEO can yield excellent results and should be integral in any new website.
Whatever your goals and whomever your market, it’s always better to start sooner rather than later. Better to publicise a countdown to publication, than not tell anyone anything at all!
Website plans allow service providers to guide YOUR expectations
If you can write out your detailed plan for your web designer, they can see what you want. They can tell what you expect to achieve, and what your limits are in terms of time and budget.
Sometimes, clients have much higher expectations than their budgets or timelines allow. Rather understand what you can feasibly achieve within your limitations. If your budget is small but your dreams are massive, a good web designer can help you navigate this. They might recommend phasing your project. They could point out where to rethink your goals so you fit within your own constraints.
You don’t want to start a website build and run out of money before it’s finished, or without a marketing plan. That’s a surefire way to waste your time and money.
Good website designers have an excellent idea of what’s possible or even likely. They are there to help you to understand what can be accomplished. Make sure you ask them as many questions as you can. You might need to adjust your website plan according to their insight.
Get all your stakeholders to buy into your plan early
Your website build will probably require the involvement of several different people from your business. If not, then you might need the assistance of a graphic designer or copywriter to work alongside your website designer. Whatever your personal situation, you will need all parties to work together to make the website build successful.
People who are working off the same plan so know what’s expected of them. They can flag any issues with their schedules or skills as early as possible.
You might need board or budget approval, or someone from within your company to gather all your Frequently Asked Questions. Maybe you need to redesign your logo and CI? Maybe you need a social media strategist to to complement your website efforts? You might need to schedule time in your own calendar for writing, briefing, organising, and proofing? Maybe you need to hire a photographer for professional premises and team photographs?
It’s easier to nominate the people involved in your website build during the planning stage.
All these moving parts and busy people need to come together for the project to run smoothly. The individuals or businesses involved must have time and capacity to perform their responsibilities.
Things will run more smoothly if everyone knows the website plan, the marketing plan, the budget, and the timeline.
Website planning gives you a complete overview of your project before you start
A written plan is much easier to change than a half-built website. It’s also cheaper to alter your plan, than add to the project once it’s complete. Don’t wait until your budget is drained to ask for changes!
Website planning allows you:
- To see an overview of the entire project before you start
- To decide your objectives and how you might fulfil them, from the start
- To get the most accurate quote possible
- To build and begin a marketing strategy as soon as possible
- To make everyone aware of their responsibilities and ensure they’re committed to the same timeline
There will always be surprises during a website build. However, we can recognise a LOT of these in advance. A good plan allows us to address issues before we start a build.
So, when something inevitably does strike out of the blue, we can solve it on time and within budget.
