A practical checklist for planning a new website
The process of creating a new website can seem pretty daunting, especially if you’re new to it. But getting the basics right from the start will help to ensure that things fall into place further down the line, and give your project the best chance of success. Use our checklist to focus on the key questions that need to be addressed in order to plan an effective website.
- Site objectives
Key question: What is the purpose of your website?
First of all you need to establish exactly what your site is for. What do you want people to do when/after they visit it? Are you giving them information, providing a platform for interaction, encouraging them to buy something?
Once you’ve pinned down your objectives, keep these in mind throughout planning, testing and evaluating, to ensure that pathways and calls to action are absolutely clear.
When considering your site objectives, it can help to examine your competitors; is there anything that they do particularly well that you haven’t thought of? Is there something they’re missing that you could provide?
2. Audience
Key question: Who is your target audience?
It’s important to identify who your website is aimed at – being as specific as possible – so that you can tailor it to suit them.
Try to get into the minds of your target audience and always consider your site from this point of view, as well as your own. Find out as much as you can about them; what search terms do they use? What functionality do they need? What technology do they use? Is their locality important?
It’s really helpful to create some user personas to inform your project; these are characters that represent different types of visitors and the different paths that they may take through your site.
3. Content
Key question: What content do you need, and how will you source it?
Once you’ve established the objectives of your website, who it’s aimed at and what they need, you can start planning content around that.
Carrying out a content inventory is a good start; you may have an old website, printed brochures or a business plan with existing content that can be repurposed. Decide what to keep, what to edit and what to bin, as well as identifying gaps and how to fill them. Bear in mind that content means everything on a site – images, videos, pdfs and infographics as well as text.
Card sorting exercises are useful for planning your site structure, and remember that it’s good to follow convention; people expect certain information (eg ‘contact’ and ‘about’ pages), and some things are legally necessary (eg T&Cs). Consider how your business/site might grow in the future, and how this could fit within your structure. Think strategically about how you’ll keep the site updated.
4. Functionality and design
Key question: What is your design brief?
Whoever is designing/building your website needs to know two things: what it should look like, and how it should function.
In terms of design, think about your brand and how you want to reflect that. You probably already have a logo, but are there other elements that need to be designed/incorporated, eg a strapline, key imagery, a particular colour palette?
In terms of functionality, consider the purpose of your site. Do you need a booking system, map search function, contact forms, a blog, online shopping facility? How will your site integrate with social media? Again, try to plan for the future as much as possible.
5. Budget and timetable
Key question: What is your budget and timescale?
It’s essential to pin down your budget when planning a new website. You can achieve surprisingly good results for a modest sum, but obviously the more complex your requirements in terms of functionality, the more it will cost. You may decide to identify what is affordable now, and what can be added on at a later date.
Don’t forget to factor content creation/management into your budget, as well as design/build; it’s often overlooked but vital to success.
Setting a timetable with milestones will help ensure that you stick to schedule, which is particularly important if there’s a crucial date involved (eg a key event or a product launch).
6. Responsibilities
Key question: Who is going to do the work?
Make sure that everyone understands their responsibilities, and has enough time assigned for the work. Tasks can include:
- Writing a content strategy
- Writing/editing/sourcing content (text, images, videos etc)
- Designing the site
- Building the site
- Uploading content
- Site updates + content management/marketing
- Technical maintenance + hosting
- SEO and monitoring
- Link building
This is not an exhaustive list; some tasks are likely to be done by the same person/people (some of whom will probably be external).
7. Measuring success
Key question: How will you know if your site is effective?
It’s pointless doing all of this work if you don’t monitor your project. You need to know if your website is actually helping you to achieve your business objectives, and therefore worth the time and money that you’re spending on it.
Incorporate user testing into your timetable/budget, to check that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for on your site, and all the functionality works. Build in SEO from the start, set targets to measure success, and monitor them.