Since the advent of free and easy-to-use website design software and online content management platforms such as WordPress, it has become easier than ever to create new websites. In a few minutes, with a couple of clicks, you could have a home business website.
That being said, if your goal is to have a website which attracts clients and customers, you’re going to have to do more than just slap together a landing page. Planning a website correctly is as vital as the creation of one.
To ensure that you don’t miss any critical steps in the construction of your website, let’s explore the simple P.L.A.N. acronym, used by many devs to create web presences which help business owners reach their business goals.
What does P.L.A.N. stand for?
Prepare - Identify your target audience, your website tone (which should be aligned with your brand tone), and goals.
Landscape - Carefully consider how you want your website to function and more specifically, which features you need to be on it.
Aesthetics - This refers to the way your website looks and feels. It’s as important as what your website can do. Take the time to carefully consider the colours and images you want on your site and how it lives up to its competitors in this light.
Navigation - It’s vitally important to plan how you want your target audience to navigate around your website. By deciding on what pages you need and how they need to be laid out, it will help ensure that people have a great visitor experience from the get-go.
How does one P.L.A.N. a website?
PREPARE: Before rushing to purchase your domain name and web hosting to create your website, you need to devise a sound plan. Revisit your business plan to help with the following steps:
Clearly define and determine who your target market is. Carefully consider who is most likely to purchase what you’re selling and the best manner of speaking to them.
Decide on the goal of your website. Your goal needs to include what you want your website to do for you and can include lead generation, e-Commerce (selling products), etc.
Carefully put together all the information you need on the site to achieve your business goals.
Lastly, organise your information based on your target market and decide on the best way to provide this information to your prospects. In some instances, the tone might be formal while in other cases, presentations might require a more casual appearance.
LANDSCAPE: Plotting the “lay of the land” for is basically deciding on which site features are essential and desirable for you to meet your website goals. To properly achieve this, you will need to revisit your goals for your website in the previous step. For example, if you’re selling products, you will need a credit card processing and shopping cart feature.
Other features to consider include:
A lead magnet, for building an email list.
e-Commerce set up, which includes a shopping cart and payment processing.
Photo and/or video galleries.
A blog section.
A map and directions to your business or home office.
A contact page and information which includes your trading hours.
Social media links and share buttons.
A F.A.Q. section. (Frequently Asked Questions).
Portfolio.
Testimonial page.
You won’t only want to consider front-end features though; you will also need to think about back-end features such as:
Integrated marketing systems, for example, search engine optimisation (SEO).
Security systems, such as an SSL certificate, to ensure your site visitors feel secure.
Website caching to help your web pages load faster.
Please note that you don’t necessarily need all of the features listed above. You need to consider your market and your website goals to determine what is required.
AESTHETICS: Design aesthetics or simply, the way your website looks, is a critical aspect of your website’s creation process. Fortunately, many web hosting companies offer templates and content management platforms have themes to make this component easy, and often, cost-effective.
To decide on the look of your site consider the following:
Revisit your business plan to determine who is to be your market. Consider their demographics. You would approach business owners differently than parents or hobbyists. It’s vital to align your site tone with your target market. For example, it’s not going to help anyone if you pick an outlandish, retro 80’s synth-wave template if your website is being created to conduct business in a conservative business-to-business (B2B) environment.
Ensure that your website is easy to read. Generally, white fonts on a black background are harder to read than black on white. Furthermore, also consider your font style. We advise sticking to basic fonts which all browsers will be able to accurately deliver to your readers.
Ensure that you use images. Research indicates that readers are attracted to visual content. That being said, you need to ensure you select quality imagery which enhances your site’s content and message while avoiding going overboard with too many pictures. You could opt to shoot your photographs or go the route of free or cheap stock photography. Should you not have professional photography editing suites, you could opt for one of the many free/low-cost online graphic editing tools such as Canva.
You need to ensure that your best information, the info visitors have come for is front and centre on their screens. Today, there are far too many websites; your prospects could visit if they can’t find what they’re looking for on your website’s pages. You need to keep this in mind for each of your website’s pages. Always avoid making your site visitors scroll down for ages to get the information they’re seeking.
Implement a responsive design. A responsive design allows web pages to translate into a format which is properly viewable on mobile devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets.
If you’re struggling with creating the visual tone of your website, consider visiting your competition’s sites to see what they’ve done. By doing this, you’ll get ideas on what to do as well as what to avoid.
NAVIGATION: Website navigation refers to the way website pages and links are organised. Deciding on your website’s navigation structure before you start building is critical in designing a site which is easy for your visitors to use to find what they want.
To map out your website’s navigation structure:
Use a page/a sheet of paper to map out your site. At the top, you should have your homepage or top page of your website. This is the page that your URL (www.business.co.za) should direct to.
Next, list pages you need, such as the “About” and “Contact” pages, just below your home page. If your site requires a checkout or shopping cart feature, this will also go on this level.
List all the primary categories of your website, just under your homepage, on the same level as “About” and “Contact”. For instance, if you have a video game store, your main categories might be; “Playstation 4”, “Xbox One”, Nintendo Switch and “P.C.”.
Lastly, under the primary categories, list your subcategories. Using the video game store example again, under “Playstation 4” you might have “Consoles”, “New releases”, “Download Codes” etc.
Once you’ve determined all the pages that your site needs, you’ll need to decide on how easily you want customers to find them. Many sites have a top and/or side menu which appears on every page. Top menus commonly have more limited space than side menus, so usually, you’ll only want your main pages (Home, About, Contact) and maybe your top category page links at the top. However, you do want to make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. Another option is to implement a drop-down list from the top menu. Returning to our video game store example, when a person hovers over the main category “Playstation 4”, a drop-down list of the subcategories, “Consoles”, “New Games”, and “Download Codes appears. Furthermore, this can be achieved with side menus using a “nesting effect”, in which clicking on the primary category opens the sub-category just below it.
Always remember to include a search box on your website for the impatient user who has no interest in exploring to find what they’re looking for, or for the visitor who is actually having difficulty in finding what they’re looking for.
Conclusion.
Once you’ve successfully completed your P.L.A.N. you’ll be ready to move on the construction phase of your website. Next up, is purchasing your domain name, web hosting and choosing the theme and tools to provide all the features you want to include.
Once your site has been built, it’s time for testing (but more on that in a later article). Ensure that you check that every page works correctly and that all graphics and images load properly. Test all forms to ensure that they are working and consider previewing your site on various browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari etc.) as well as on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) to ensure that all the elements appear and are working correctly.
For any information regarding your domain and web hosting, please visit the Domains.co.za business page to access their contact and service information.