Planning Phase

Just like information-gathering, the planning step of website design is a critical part of launching a new website.

If you doubt the need to spend time in the planning phases of the website design process, think about any other non-web-related project you’ve ever done, whether personal or for business.

Chances are if you start to build a new shed, for example, without first planning out how the process will be completed from beginning to end, your end result probably won’t end up standing up for very long.

As a business owner or website designer, it’s extremely tempting to want to jump right into the design step of building a website. This is mainly because the design phase is obviously the most creative (and enjoyable) part of a project (for most people). However, proper research and planning will help clarify your objectives for the website and guide your design.

Because of this, spending a generous amount of time in this stage of the process is critical to the success of the project.

Have you ever heard the old saying, “measure twice, cut once?” This concept also holds true for designing websites. Spending time on website planning is a good investment that will ultimately save you time and even money in the long run.

During the planning phase, you’ll want to review or create an SEO strategy for the website. Since websites often organize a lot of information into a user-friendly format, this is also a good time to get an idea of missing content before you start designing anything.

The planning phase also helps clients understand their role in meeting deadlines with content, so the launch process isn’t held up. And if you’ve ever designed a website for a client, you already know that chasing client content can be the one key (and often frustrating) factor that keeps projects from being completed on schedule.

The planning phase of website design includes 3 basic tasks, which we’ll cover here in more detail.

They are:

Create or review a strategy for SEO
Create the website sitemap
Content review and development

Let’s take a close look at each.
Create or Review a Strategy for SEO

In its simplest form, SEO is:

“The practice of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic to your site through organic search engine results.”

While most people today are at least somewhat familiar with the concepts of SEO, what’s often forgotten is that SEO best practices aren’t a static set of rules.

In fact, they are ever-changing.

So what goes into SEO that brings the best possible results in 2021 and beyond? To fully understand the meaning of search engine optimization, we need to break down the above definition into three individual parts.

They are:

Quality of site traffic: Sure, you can bring in thousands of random site visitors every single day through a variety of different strategies. But if a user lands on your site because Google showed them that you’re a resource for buying Apple iPhones when your site actually sells farm-fresh apples, you haven’t brought in a quality visitor.

Rather, it’s important to know how to attract visitors that are genuinely interested in what your website has to offer.

Quantity of site traffic: After you’ve determined exactly how to get the right users to click through to your site from the search engine results pages, or SERPs, it’s time to bring in more of them. After all, the more quality visitors you bring in, the more qualified leads you’ll uncover.

Organic search results: Any time you run a Google search, you’ll notice that all of the top results are populated with ads that appear to be organic search results. The truth is that these ads make up a significant portion of any website’s SERPs.

But organic traffic is what we’re after with SEO. This is the traffic that comes in constantly and repeatedly every single day without ever paying Google to place an ad.

And it is possible to do.

Here’s how to get started:

If you’re building your own website, research specific search terms for your business or industry. If you’re working with a client, talk to them about the same
Research and review keyword volumes
Create a spreadsheet of keywords/keyphrases
Audit existing website content for SEO focus
Make a list of SEO content needs to fill in gaps
Map keywords/keyphrases to existing or future content

If you’re brand new to doing your own SEO or to providing search engine optimization services to clients, we have several free SEO training and basics of SEO training videos available.

You can also check out the SEO Summit for 9 hours of intensive SEO training.
Create the Website Sitemap

After working on an SEO strategy during your Planning Phase, next, it’s time to build the website sitemap.

A sitemap is essentially an outline of the structure of the pages that will comprise the website. Planning the sitemap prior to working on any website design has several key benefits that can’t be overlooked.

For example, you can:

Build your design around the most important pages
Plan the website navigation more efficiently
Get an overall idea of the content that still needs to be written

Using your SEO Strategy, build a sitemap with appropriate page hierarchies and content silos.

Create a dedicated document for your sitemap and site outline.

You can use the sitemap as a checklist to guide the progress of your project.

Include basic website pages (About, Contact, etc.) plus additional keyword/keyphrase pages.

For WordPress site owners, consider using the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to help you.
Content Review and Development

The last part of the website planning process includes an in-depth review of the website content.

To get started, you’ll want to take an audit of existing content (if there is already an existing website that’s being replaced or re-worked) and make a plan for producing new content that will help the website perform better.

Clients can be responsible for creating new content, but that often presents otherwise-avoidable problems. Most often, clients who agree to write content for their own site have a lot of other things going on in their businesses and lives. Even if you set strict deadlines for content delivery,

The reality is that most people simply don’t enjoy, or don’t know the right way, to write content for websites.

If you’re considering putting yourself in charge of writing content for a website but aren’t thrilled with the idea, it’s often extremely helpful to contract with a freelance writer to satisfy your content needs.

There are some inexpensive content houses, such as TextBroker, Scripted, The Hoth, and many others that can help you with the content process.

During the content review and development process, you’ll want to:

Review existing web content
Ask for non-web content such as brochures, business cards or flyers
Hire or assign writers for content needs
Put deadlines on content completion

A website will not succeed without great content. Therefore, it’s important to put a lot of time and energy into ensuring that the content of your project is ready to perform.