Website Planning in 4 Steps and 20 Minutes

Website Planning in 4 Steps and 20 Minutes

Everything you should know about website planning Save yourself a lot of time and headache: before you dive into building your new website, think through a high-level website plan. The point here is not to develop a perfect plan, but rather to equip yourself to get started building your website. Determine What Content You’ll Need for Your Site You need to have a good idea of what kinds of content you will create — but, of course, it isn’t realistic to think you’ll have your content created before you build the website. The website will have to come first. Podcasts Product pages Utility content (e.g. privacy policy) About content For SelfTeach.com, these are the content types and ideas that I need to plan for when creating the website: When all is said and done, the website will have thousands of pages. Your brand assets don’t need to be anything spectacular. It’s up to you to decide what you’ll need now, and what you’ll need to prepare for when it’s time. Logo Brand colors Brand fonts Iconography Photography Illustrations Podcasts Customer testimonials Customer reviews eBooks / White papers Videos About content Nail Down Your Must-Have Website Features Features are probably the most important part of your website foundation. The goal is to find the perfect balance of theme features and plugin features. Get Inspiration on the Look and Feel Knowing everything that you need to have on the website will help determine which WordPress theme to choose and which plugins to install.

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Everything you should know about website planning

Save yourself a lot of time and headache: before you dive into building your new website, think through a high-level website plan.

This planning process doesn’t need to be complicated or time intensive. It’s more or less about taking the time to answer some important questions that will help ensure you build your website with the right foundation to accomplish your goals.

For example, creating a website to sell products is very different than creating a website for your personal brand. Thinking through what you’ll need to accomplish one or the other is essential to building a successful website. (If you don’t make the right choices now, you may have to tear down everything you’ve built and start over from square one.)

In fact, this planning process is as much about deciding what you do not need for your website, as it is to figure out what you do need. Less is definitely more here. Don’t fall into the trap of adding a bunch of stuff to your website just because it seems like something you should or because it’s what other websites do. I recommend using MindMeister or some other mind-mapping tool to drive this process.

The purpose of this guide is to prepare you to create your website.

In order to best illustrate the process, I’ll walk you through how I did it for one of my undeveloped websites, SelfTeach.com. This is a content-driven website, so there is a heavy emphasis on written content.

If you take a look at my initial plan here, you’ll see it isn’t very extensive. It doesn’t need to be! This was just a quick brainstorm of what I think I’ll need for the website. It took me 20 minutes to think through.

Remember, you do not need to get this perfect. The point here is not to develop a perfect plan, but rather to equip yourself to get started building your website. Once you get into the weeds, the plan will evolve with you.

Determine What Content You’ll Need for Your Site

You need to have a good idea of what kinds of content you will create — but, of course, it isn’t realistic to think you’ll have your content created before you build the website. The website will have to come first.

Again, you don’t need to have a full list of all the content you’ll need forever. Instead, I recommend coming up with 1–2 content ideas for each type of content you want on your site. This will give you a good sense of what your content will look like, which will influence which WordPress theme you’ll use.

Some common content types:

  • Blog posts or articles
  • Guides / How to articles
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Curated content
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Inspirational content
  • Updates
  • Case studies
  • Q&A
  • Podcasts
  • Product pages
  • Utility content (e.g. privacy policy)
  • About content

For SelfTeach.com,…

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