Planning your website – the do’s and don’ts

Website Hosting Liverpool

19th September 2019

l

defnetmedia

We’re producing some handy guides which we hope you find helpful as they have been helpful for us to examine the process of building sites and the thinking that needs to take place before you even think about hosting. 

This article is aimed at small businesses

It’s really important when planning your site to think about what it is you are creating the site for. What are the aims of your business or project? Aim refers to the general direction or intent of an individual or company. Your website should represent the aims of your business. Websites should do more than just relay information.

You Aim to sell Beauty Products

Your Objectives beneath that might be to generate 100 sales through the website per week.
Objectives are the short-term goals and you may have many of them, 100 sales per week, sign ups to your newsletter, 1000 visitors per week. etc.

Working out your Aims and Objectives is the first thing to do before you start writing the content for your website.

Being in business is a serious thing so spending some time now at the start of your business planning process deciding how you would like it to work, is time well spent.

What is the objective of the site?
Websites can have many different objectives; a single website could have one simple objective, or it could have many different objectives as long as they lead towards the same aim of Selling Beauty Products.

If you plan to have a website with many objectives, you will want to decide which of these is the most important or maybe give each a weight EG. 40% attract people to sign up to your mailing list, 30% information, 30% sales.

For example, a Newspaper or Media website is in the business of conveying news to readers, that is its primary objective.

What is it that keeps a news website in business? Advertising. So, one of its objectives is to get readers to click on news articles from social media sites so that they view advertisements. We would say that the primary objective is to convey news while its secondary objective is to get eyes on advertisements. The more eyes on the adverts then the more money is made for the business.

So, what is the objective or objectives of your website? Spend some time considering this.

What actions would you like your visitors to take on your website?

This may be to complete a form or to purchase goods.
You may just want a simple informational website, to simply convey information to your site visitors.

Consider your services, what is it that you would like visitors to buy or find out from your site? Break your services down into three or four elements. Now describe the services in 30-40 words, as these will be a full introduction to your services.  

Structuring your site
Most modern sites have some sort of structure to them. They separate content into different sections or onto different pages. On normal small business sites, you will see pages such as Home, Services/Products, About Us, Shop, Contact Us.

Some websites prefer to go for a long page that visitors can simply scroll through when they arrive on your home page. Other websites will have the content split off into several pages and they may take advantage of specific landing pages for products or services.

Think about your pages or sections separately

Home, Services/Products, About Us, Shop, Contact Us.
Take a large note pad and write these headings at the top of each page in your notepad. Visit other people’s websites and see what kind of content they have on their sites. Now make notes on each of the pages about what you would want on your site pages.

Typical things to think about are introductory text.
Images (get good strong images of your products or services)
Videos
A list of services or products
Your contact details – email, address and telephone number
Testimonials
A slideshow
A map to show your location

This is a really good way of working on your site before you even start doing anything online. It also really helps you get your ideas clear.

Create a folder on your computer and call it Website and within that create more folders named after your pages. Into those folders place the images and written text that you would like to use.

This makes it easy to visit and revisit your work before you even start any work.

Written by defnetmedia

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

On the Blog

Our news and views to help you

Learn more about us

Providing Carbon Neutral Web Hosting Based Entirely In The UK, Powered By Renewable Energy

Projects

Clients

× How can I help you?