Tips for planning your website

If your business isn't online, it doesn't exist. 

Whether you're starting a new business or managing an established brand you know it's vital to have a website - but where do you begin?  What is involved or what is it going to cost?

Have a cunning plan

Before you start to design a new website you need to have a plan. This is just as true if you are revamping an existing website or starting from scratch. Answering these questions will help you to put together a brief to work to or pass to a developer. Here are my top tips for planning your website:

1. What's the purpose of your website

First ask yourself the purpose of your web site. This might be:

• To sell products online.
• To raise your personal or business profile
• To tell customers and potential customers where your bricks & mortar shop or restaurant is.
• To share news about product launches.
• To get people to book events, tables or workshops.
• To publish a blog or journal about what you do, your recipes, your travels etc.

2. Who is your audience?

• Consumers and customers 
• Other businesses
• Journalists and the media

What do you know about them?  Are they in the UK or do you have an international audience? How old are they? Are they digitally savvy or not? Are they adventurous or more conservative?

As with all marketing, the more you know about your customers the better, to enable you to communicate with them in a relevant and engaging way.

3. Why do you need a new website?

Are you launching a new business or revamping an old website? If you already have a website make notes about what is good about it and what isn't. How does it work for you and your team to manage and keep up-to-date.  If you have any details available (like Google Analytics) find out what content is popular. If you sell stuff online how smooth is the process for shoppers - how many steps are there to complete a purchase. You could even ask a friends or customers what they think of the site and what improvements they'd suggest to the user experience.

4. What's your style?

A good place to start here is to have a look at websites of similar businesses and competitors or other websites you use in a different area - make a note of the elements that you like or dislike and why.

5. What's your brand look and feel?

Do you have a strong brand identity already or do you need to build one? Do you have a logo, and colour scheme that you use in packaging or brochures?  If not think about what colours you like that fit your product or style.

6. What photographs do you need?

All websites need good strong photography - especially if your product is food. What photography do you have already or do you need more?  Be warned poor photography can let your brand down and there is nothing less appetising than bad food photography. A professional photographer is well worth the investment.  

Video is also a great way to engage people with what you do. If you have any video think about how you use it on your site.

7. What key content do you want to include?

Once you've worked out your objectives, what you're trying to say and to whom, then you can start to think about how you say it. If you have a website already resist the urge to just replicate the layout and existing content; it's much better to stand back and start with a blank sheet of paper.  Things you will probably want to include:

• A welcome page to introduce who you are and what you do
• About Us - a more detailed page telling your story
• What you do/What you sell - details of your products or services
• Contact information and your social media links

Extra pages and elements to consider:

• An online shop
• A blog or news section to keep people up to date
• Event listings
• A list of stockists - perhaps searchable by location or on a map.
• Sample menus
• Tips & Expertise - share content to establish you and your brand as experts at what you do, this might be recipes
• A newsletter sign up box

8. What layout or navigation do you want?

Plan what content you want to appear where and how it's structured. What do you want to show in the header or footer of each page? Try to draw a map or family tree showing the pages you want to show in the main navigation and any sub-pages.

9. Get a domain name?

Your domain name is your website address or URL. You need to claim or register your domain and it's important to choose the right one from the start. No matter how your business changes or if you redesign your brand or your website, your domain name should be consistent.

Obviously your first choice would be your brand/business name but if this is unavailable you may need to be a bit creative either by creating a compound name like EatBrand (for a restaurant) or WeAreBusiness. A dot com is the most popular domain level, especially if you are setting up an online shop or targeting an international audience, or co.uk if you are UK-focussed. But there are lots of other options available like .co, .net, .london to consider.

Make sure your domain name is short, relevant and recognisable. Although these days most people use a search engine like Google to find any website now rather than remembering a URL and typing it out from scratch. Spend some time looking at what domains are available and playing with different variations

There are many services available for buying your domain and checking availability - 123.reg, names, nominet. I like 34.sp and GoDaddy. You can also buy your domain through Squarespace and Shopify if you are using those platforms to build your site.

10. Do you need a web host?

Yes. Think of website hosting as paying rent for your space on the worldwide web, like rening a physical building as your home or shop, your web host houses your website files. There are many options for hosting, if you're building your own website in Squarespace, Shopify or similar, hosting is included in the package and you don't need to buy separate hosting. If not you can buy hosting through your domain provider but don't choose it on price alone. You need to look at their level of service, security, and uptime - here are some detailed tips on choosing your web host. If you are using a developer they will be able to advise you further on this.

11. How much does it cost to build a website?

This is a 'how long is a piece of string' question! It can cost next to nothing if you build it yourself, or a thousand or several thousand pounds if you want a complex, bespoke, ecommerce website built by a specialist developers.

It's important to set yourself a budget before you start speaking to developers and give them a ballpark figure of what you are prepared to spend so that they can propose a solution to fit your budget.

12. How much time do you have to work on your site?

Ask yourself early on how much time do you have to manage your site, will you be doing it yourself or someone in your team or do you need someone to manage it for you? Are you confident about using websites or does the idea send you into panic? Will you have time to upload all the content on the new site or do you need someone to do that for you? This will impact how the site is built.

13. What platform or CMS should you use?

If you have a limited budget and are confident about managing a website (or even just a computer), then I recommend using one of the DIY web platforms like Squarespace (for a content /marketing site or blog) or Shopify for an online shop. They come with a wide range of ready built templates so you can create a beautifully designed website for very little money. It puts you in full control and they are incredibly easy to manage and keep up to date.  Here's why I love Squarespace.

If you like the look of these options but don't have the confidence to do it all yourself there are freelancers who will build a site for you in one of these platforms. If you need help with Squarespace I'd love to help you, or Shopify have a list of their recommended developers here. A specialist can help to make the standard templates look more unique to you.

Alternatively you may need to bring in a specialist developer to to build your website for you. Start by asking friends or contacts in your business network who they would recommend locally. Put together a detailed brief covering all the points above and send it to two or three developers asking them how they'd approach the project including their costs. It is worth meeting any potential developer in person as it's important to find someone you like, trust and can work well with.

Make sure you've agreed a detailed plan with them upfront as if you decide to make last minute changes it can end up costing you a lot more time and money.

Please don't let developers talk you into using their exclusive content management system (CMS) that are unique to their business, it can be very expensive and very restrictive.  Go for something opensource (i.e. available to everyone) like Wordpress, Magento or Umbraco.

14. Pull it all together

It makes life easier if you pull everything together before you start. This includes writing all your content, collating a list of products or events, writing a few blogs (and/or recipes).  Create a file with all the photography you want to use (and remember to crop and resize if necessary before uploading it to the site).  You'll also need your logo, and a scaled down version to use for the favicon, the little icon that appears in the tab of your web browser. If you're an existing brand do you have guidelines about the colours and fonts you use - make sure you share these with the web designer.

15. Set yourself a deadline

Whether your building your own site or working with a developer agree a date when you aim to launch the site. Even if you don't hit the deadline, it's good to have goal to work towards!

16. GO!