How to plan a website

Check out my structured approach to designing a website, from the initial planning to SEO, social media and content.

Planning a website

Where does one begin? Or more specifically, where should YOU begin? You've been asked to design a website, or maybe you are designing your own website to house your amazing web idea. So what questions should you be asking to get this thing off the ground? Each of these stages will need considerable thought and further research, but it can be useful to see the whole process written down in brief, if only so it doesn't seem so horrifically daunting.

So, where should you start? At the very beginning, of course.

Top ten questions to think about when designing a website

1. What type of business is it? 

There's lots of variations, but the main ones are B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer). Knowing who you are talking to is crucial and sets the tone for the whole website.

2. What is the purpose of the website?

• E-commerce

• Relationship building

• Branding

• Portal

• Community site

3. What would be a good domain name for the website?

Check the availability of your domain name on a site such as www.easyspace.com or www.123-reg.co.uk. Check out which hosting account would suit your website (depending on which requirements your website needs, for example e-commerce). Once decided, buy the hosting account and (using the DNS nameservers) point your domain name at your hosting company. There'll be plenty of instruction on your hosting website on how to do this - I was a novice when I first did this, but www.easyspace.com takes you through each of the steps needed. Don't forget there is a slight delay (a day or so) between pointing to your new domain name, and it appearing like that on the world-wide-web. From your hosting company portal you can also set up a suitable email address, if you need it. 

4. What is the visitor looking for?

List all the products, services or activities you think your visitors would be looking for. Once you have your list, this can form the shell of the structure of your website - each thing on your list can have its own page making it logical for your visitor. This will form the base for your sitemap, which is basically all the ideas for your website collated in one place in a logical (and user-friendly) shape. Brainstorm on a bit of paper and imagine you are in a shop - specific items under general divisions (super market > fruit section > apples > Granny Smith).  

5. What do you want the visitor to do?

Everyone needs purpose - and so does your website. What's your ultimate goal? Even if it's a blogging space to put your thoughts, you'd still like people to read it - so you need a Follow Me button! 

Make a list of all the things you'd like your visitor to do - this is also a good time to be thinking of some success measurers. What I mean is, you'd like to get people to contact you about (for example) your business. So you need a Contact Us page or button. But this is also a great way to measure how successful your website is (if nobody is contacting you, even though you get decent traffic, you might need to consider what is so repellent about your web copy …).

So things you could consider are:

• Social buttons (the option to tweet about what they've read, 'like' your page, post to Facebook, share etc)

• Contact page or 'email us' button

• Sign up for a survey

• Follow button

• Donate button

• Add to cart/purchase button

6. How do I want the site to look?

Okay - so you've thought about the purpose of your website, who you're talking to, what they expect to find, what you'd like them to do. Now's the more fun bit - what do you want the site to look like? There's loads of information out there on best-practice, which I will cover in another post, but the main considerations are:

• What images are you thinking about? No giant images please, it really slows the website down and annoys the visitor, who then clicks off never to return! You don't have to start rummaging through your memory for what all the settings on your dusty SLR camera mean, there are plenty of freely available images available on the internet. There are a load on www.pixabay.com, which are under CC0 Creative Commons (free for commercial use, no attribution required). Go take a look. Think of one image per page and don't forget a descriptive name for the file name and the Alt Tag (for SEO and accessibility purposes)

• Think about the colour scheme for your website and make all the colours consistent, if they are not part of the standard range, by checking the hex number www.color-hex.com.

• Consider font - easy to read is best (obvs)

• Get re-sizing any logos that you might need

7. Site content

·        This subject is too big to cover here, and I'll cover it in another post. But suffice to say, you need some and it needs to be good enough that visitors get the information they need quickly and easily (see, I didn't use the word 'engaging'!). Keep to plain English, keep sentences short and paragraphs short. Imagine someone only has a few seconds to find the information they need (unless it's a pleasurable browse through a blog post, coffee in hand, in which case unleash your inner Hemingway). Use bullet points, lots of space and lists, otherwise that poor person scrolling through your content on their phone is going to lose the will to live...

8. Social Media

To help get some visibility for your website it is worth integrating social media. Which social media you choose will very much depend on where your potential readers are - for example, a B2B website should link to LinkedIn and Twitter, whereas a more fun site might link to Facebook. Think of any niche sites where your readers might be. Here are some things to think about - both enabling your reader to share on social media and also (from the other direction) be pointed towards your website from social media:

• If you are using a blogging platform (such as this www.wordpress.com), then think about whether you want the 'comments' section abled or disabled. You can moderate the comments before they are published, and they are a great way to have a conversation with your readers and relay further information. It's worth moderating before publishing though, nobody wants foamy-mouthed haters spoiling their site...

• Check that your website is generating an RSS feed properly.

• Can visitors connect through all social media accounts that you've ear-marked?

• Can visitors share content through their social media accounts?

• Consider linking your blog publishing to your social media accounts, to share when posted.

9. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Again, a huge topic. I'll cover this in more detail in another blog posts, but some overview things to think about:

• Keywords/phrases - one page per keyword and one keyword per page.

• Page URL - Use keywords in page URL (use dashes to separate words, not spaces or underscores).

• HTML title tags - This is the bit that is shown at the top of the browser window and you should use the keyword you have chosen for the page. Place this keyword near the start of the title, and other (less important words) nearer the end. Use a location if at all possible, giving the search engines more to work with. For example <title>keyword-location-company name</title>

• Use the H1 heading tag and be as descriptive as possible, again to help out the search engines. For example <h1>keyword at the beginning of a descriptive phrase</h1>

• First paragraph should include the page's keyword in the first sentence, using other keywords afterwards. Make the paragraph readable and make sure it makes sense - don't make it look like a weird experiment in keyword stuffing, or the reader will probably just click away.

• Headings in the text - first level subheadings <h2>, second level <h3> etc. Clearly describe what is in the following paragraph.

• Images - name them descriptively, and use the title and ALT attributes to describe the image in more details. The ALT description helps with accessibility of your website as well.

• External links - try to make them as descriptive as possible, rather than just 'click here'. Make sure the link actually works (duh!) and get the new page to open up in a different window, so that your reader doesn't click off your website (never to be seen again...).

• Internal links - link to any relevant internal webpages, and be descriptive!

10. Important, but boring, things not to forget

• Unique, strong passwords for all of your accounts.

• Set up Google Analytics to track the success of your website.

• Back up as much material as you can, and preferably the whole site (on a regular basis!).

• Keep an eye out for any updates for your website.

• Regularly check for broken links, disappearing images, missing pages etc.