Plan For a Website From A to Z Proven by Experience

Do you want to get a quality site that sells? Then you should know your preferences and what to expect from a site considering tech characteristics and content. As we deal with web development and optimization since 2008, we know how to succeed. Today, we’d like to help you create a plan for a website, starting from defining what template you need to marketing strategies that will work.

Is It Necessary to Plan a Website?

Of course, it is! It’s not an easy task to launch a website if you don’t manage all the details. Moreover, plan for a website makes the process of building the site faster. Thus you don’t forget anything and save your precious time.

What to Start From?

First, you should choose a website template that meets your expectations. For this purpose, we have various categories for each specific niche which narrows the searches. You’ll agree that for some spheres, there should be a particular website structure and design. We know what design elements each niche requires so that it’ll be easier for you to choose a theme, and you won’t spend time on long discussions with web designers where to place these or those elements and widgets.

Let’s consider a simple example: if we take the color scheme of a template, of course, it can be easily changed in the admin panel, but there are medical website colors that work, and a theme for selling clothes or for a gym won’t fit(or you’ll have to delete and add more blocks and make lots of editings).

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Also, such themes should include high-quality galleries, convenient blocks for presenting all the information, advanced contact form for making appointments as in this sphere, trust and reliability is essential. Thus, even though MotoCMS can boast its intuitive drag and drop editor, a wide variety of blocks, and powerful widgets able to change any theme beyond recognition, it’s more beneficial to choose a theme with a more or less similar structure.

Plan For a Website – Consider Types of Websites

After you’ve found a necessary topic for a future website, you should decide on its type:

• a landing page – it fits companies that want to promote a particular product/service and encourage users to action by special offers, inviting them to webinars, offering free trials or downloading free guides/books, and so on.

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• multipage website – a turnkey solution to share your company’s vision and strengths, present your services/products in detail, provide social proof of your reliability, add contact information and convert users into potential clients.

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• eStore – a cool opportunity to sell products online. Suppose you have a usual website and want to convert it to an online shop. In that case, you can benefit from our eCommerce plugin, including advanced products settings, numerous store sections, and various payment gateways, or just purchase an eCommerce template.

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All in all, try to define what your potential clients expect from the site, mainly its functionality – number of pages, blocks, buttons, galleries, contact form, etc. As we’ve noted above, regardless of a chosen template, you can easily edit all the details in the admin for free, but why make things worse for yourself?

Tip: read our blog post on how to choose the right website template – 6 tips for your website.

Fill it With Content

It’s better to care about the content before looking for a theme or ordering web design services. Thus you’ll have a clear understanding of what you need. Moreover, you’ll point out the key website elements in such a way. First, to create a plan for a website, take a pen or build a chart and brainstorm ideas. Think of information that can be placed on the pages.

Where To Take the Text?

You can create it on your own or order a copywriting service. Please start with the names of pages, and subpages, then take every page as a separate project and work on it. Imagine you have a furniture and decor website. Therefore, there may be such pages as Home, About us, What we offer, Team, Testimonials page, Blog, Contacts(quite common ones). Let’s consider how to plan website on the example of a Homepage: a catchy phrase on the background image with CTA, some categories, and their short descriptions(like Bedroom(beds, nightstands), Living room(sofas, coffee tables), Dining room(tables, chairs), Bathroom, Kids room and so on), the image of the founder and some quotes to ensure trust, some trending products with a BUY NOW button and attractive images, some testimonials, examples of your portfolio, and link to a Blog page at the bottom.

Where to Take Media Content?

There are three possible variants – use stock, professional or DIY photos. In our blog post on where to buy images for website, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each option in detail. Remember there MUST be a quality background image above the fold and some eye-catching pictures on site. Also, ask yourself whether it’s possible to create unique videos? This media content type can present the whole picture clearly for users.

And, don’t forget about logo design! It seems to be a minor detail placed on the left, but it’s a powerful tool for building your brand awareness.

All in all, if you have a plan for a website and know what information you’re going to place on a site, you’ll have at least a grasp of the appropriate scheme of your site pages and avoid regular adjustments and difficulties in the future.

Besides, as many novices make the same mistakes during the customization process(like adding all text to the header or broking the H1-H5 structure), please, make sure you know the fundamental concepts of essential website parts before filling the pages with content.

Plan For a Website Optimization

Then, to make your content visible for search engines, it’s essential to optimize it. You can start from a good structure(proper H1-H5, short paragraphs, and lists) and filing the text with relevant keywords that you can find out with the help of such a free tool as Ubersuggest.

At this point, it’s necessary to create meta titles(no more than 60 characters) that will become visiting cards for every page and meta descriptions(no more than 165 characters) that will tell visitors and Google what to expect from your site. Also, it’s necessary to take care of image gzip compression to reduce page loading time. And don’t forget to add internal links and external if necessary(for example, in your blog).

Tip: read our article content optimized for people and Google to delve deeper into SEO copywriting.

Business Marketing Plan for a Website

A marketing strategy is a set of tools that work to achieve particular business aims. It’s a special plan for selling and promoting goods. This is where the fun begins as there are lots of KPI in marketing to track. Here it’s easier to appeal to an agency with competent specialists, but we’re sure it’s possible to figure it out by yourself. Just start from small steps, including low-cost marketing strategies, and don’t aim to get thousands of sales at once. Let’s define what you should do to turn a profit and make it pay off.

Set Goals

First, it’s necessary to understand that any strategy won’t work without specifying your goals that should be smart, mainly:

• Specific – addressing the sphere you specialize in;
• Measurable – to track progress, there should be metrics that change over time;
• Achievable – choose attainable goals(if you earn $25000 a month now, it may be not easy to make $2000000 in a year, even though everything’s possible);
• Realistic – believe in your strength but keep your feet on the ground, count on your efforts;
• Timely – try to foresee the time for achieving particular results.

Consider Target Audience Wishes

Second, tailor your aims to your target audience – their preferences and the way they act on your site(whether they go to other pages, click on buttons). You can check statistics with the help of Google Analytics and monitor what marketing solutions work in the future.

Choose Promotion Channels

In the beginning, it’ll be enough to:

• conquer social networks to improve the company’s reputation and brand awareness, and increase traffic by placing a link to the site in a profile header;
• appeal to influencers who have lots of subscribers that believe them and are ready to buy your product due to their recommendations;
• start email marketing content that converts and can encourage users for repeat sales. Moreover, it reminds them of your services and ensures to take action or at least go to the site;
• try advertising – Google Ads or targeted advertising on Facebook;
• PPC.

Besides the fact that it’s essential to use some of the strategies simultaneously to succeed, you also should draw up a schedule of activities in the selected channels (time, budgets, deadlines for tracking the results).

Don’t hesitate to monitor competitors’ websites to be the best! There is no need to steal somebody’s ideas but gather the information and use it for achieving your goals.