Seven Practical Steps for Planning a Website

Your company's website is its storefront window to the world. As such, it is critical that your site delivers the message and fulfills its mission in the most effective way possible. Even if you hire a professional organization to help you design and build your site --consider the following checklist, before you start the process.

1. Most important tip! Before you do anything, define the group that approves the site's design and implementation. Include representatives from various departments for different parts of the site (e.g. Sales representation for the sales pages, Customer Service for the support pages, etc.). Even if you are diligent about this, you will still get a boat-load of unsolicited advice on everything from purpose of the site, to its design and color scheme. Once you get corporate 'lock in' who has the final say, the process will go much smoother.

2. Next, define the goals of the site; is the site primarily a sales tool, a corporate identity site, or a commercial site? You would be surprised how different people in the company will view the website differently. You can have multiple goals of course, but when the arguments about content and design flare up, use the site goals as your compass.

3. Make a list of the important elements to be incorporated on the site; for example, the ability to download product trial versions or capture form data to the corporate CRM system, and the inclusion of multimedia customer testimonials or an ecommerce section, etc. This is easier than it sounds. Scout out sites you like and have your team do the same. Set up a meeting to go over what you like and don't like about each of these sites. Compile a list. You will quickly see the elements that are more important, and which are less.

4. Critical! Clearly define your marketing position. I can't overemphasize this is a prerequisite for getting started. Know who you are and what how you want to project your company. A simple exercise is to do a complete a 'pain sheet'--drop me an email if you want a sample. Finalize the text you want to put on your home page; the one sentence definition of who you are.

5. For each product/service on your site, identify the top 3 points you want to make. You only get a few seconds of reader attention, so these points must be relevant, engaging, and crisp. People don't read lots of website text. 'Less' is definitely 'more.' A good designer will suggest clever controls for making this information easily accessible.

6. If you are going to use an outside firm to design and build you site, now is the time to engage. You have all the relevant information in hand to start the design. If you are going to build the site yourself, continue reading.

7. Create a site map. Here is an easy way to do it. Start by defining the top level menus that must be displayed on the home page. From here, create a spreadsheet that follows the main menu structure. For each page--for example, define the following:

• A unique number so you can identify it, even if the page name changes
• Description of the page content
• SEO-friendly URL
• Where this page links to -- where you want readers to be able to reach from this page

I have prepared an Excel sheet that I used for a site I recently completed. It was an valuable tool for me to coordinate efforts across the design, implementation, and testing teams. If you want a copy, drop me an email.

At this point, you are ready to do start designing the site. Specific details about the dynamics of the site construction process are beyond the scope of this post, but here are a few more tips about the overall plan execution:

• It will take longer than you think to finish the site; plan to be 'live' about a month before you need to be.
• QA the site at several levels--obviously at the technical level, making sure there are no broken links, etc., but also at the business level. Does the site deliver your intended message? What do your sales and support people think about the usability of the site? The earlier you can gauge this, the better.