A Basic Guide to Planning Your Website
Many times people will contact me, and say, “I want a website, I want it to look like this, and it’s about this subject.” Sometimes, it’s left entirely up to my imagination of where I should even start as far as what kind of content is needed and should be featured. Then once the first design comp is sent in, they come back with a mile long list of revisions because my guessing was wrong. So here is a basic guide of what you should do before you come to me, or any designer/developer.
MAKE AN OUTLINE
Obviously you’ll want to decide on an outline of content and features, special offers, anything that you’ll want on your site. It’s helpful to make an actual written or typed outline just as you would for a written project. This helps to decide how many pages you’ll need, and what kind of navigation you’ll want. For instance, you may only end up with 5 pages, and thus have 5 links somewhere in the header or sidebar that directs the user to these pages. On the other hand, you may end up with a long list of pages that are grouped into sections. Each section heading could make up the main navigation, and feature a sub navigation in a dropdown or on the landing page for that section.
FRONT PAGE COPY
A “call to action” is some kind of link or button that says something like, “Contact Us Now” or “Order Yours Today”
Since we’ll start the design with the front page, you’ll want to decide what kind of elements you’ll want featured there. You’ll want your basics, of course, such as your logo/site title , the navigation (which you’ve decided on already), and some type of footer such as the copyright, or an affiliation declaration.
You may want your design to be so simple, that each page just contains these basic features and a bit of text with some kind of call to action. Or you may want a more complex layout. Take for instance my own front page. All of the standard features are in place, but I also have excerpts of content coming from the rest of the site- latest blog posts and portfolio thumbnails. I also have a subscribe to content box.
Before you write out all the content for your about page, and such as that, decide what you want the front page to say to the viewer, and put it in a prioritized list.
DRAW A WIREFRAME
This step can be done with my assistance, but you feel like you can accomplish this on your own. The design will have to have structure. Unless you just absolutely want everything listed one thing after the other, it’s helpful to get out an old fashioned number 2 pencil and a sheet of paper from your recycled stack, and draw out ideas of how you want it laid out. As an experienced designer, I will sometimes do this in my head, especially for more simple layouts, but it is always helpful to have something to reference. If you submit your idea to me, I may have a few suggestions and we can iron out all the wrinkles together.
Finally, we are ready to open Photoshop and get this started! All of this information will help us work together to create your website.
It’s always good to have a plan, and hopefully this little guide can help you know where to start.