Website Planning, why would I do that.?
A well planned and a well-designed website will always attract genuine customers. With the proper planning, you can make your website that will best suit the requirement of your customer. While planning out a website, the biggest mistake that people make is that they do not see or visualize the website from the viewpoint of the visitor.
You can visualize a website as your online shop or say an online salesperson who is exhibiting your products or services to your clients. Would you like your shop or retail outlet to be messed up with things where your customer can not find what he needs or would you like your salesperson to be dressed up as if he/she has not taken a bath since a year.? Obviously not..!
The same intellection applies to Website Planning.! You need to make your website a perfect one with the view point of your users or your end customers. Let’s see how this can be done:
Website Planning #1: Decide the purpose for your website.
This is the first step towards a perfect website planning. Sit back and have a rigorous brainstorming on ‘Why are you making this site..?’ The outcome could be anything like you have your business and want to display your products online, it could be to display your services online or it could be selling your products or services online. Other than these options there are a lot of reasons to start a website like a blog or a discussion platform and a lot more.
So, be specific on why you need this website and why is this website required. Once you are done with what is the purpose of your website, it would be very easy when you go to a good website developer.
Website Planning #2: Who is going to visit your site.?
The website has to be designed in the way that is more convenient to your users. To analyze these things, first, your need to be clear with the mass that is to visit your website. Maybe if your end customers are kids the website needs to be extremely easy to surf and also the design has to be colorful and attractive. If professionals are to visit your site, probably they will not like to see a Pokemon running on your site.!
You may ask yourself the questions like:
- What will be the average age of your visitors
- Their gender
- Their literacy rate
- Their culture
- Their geographical location
These points will almost give you a very clear idea of who are going to visit your website and you can have your site designed accordingly.
Website Planning #3: What is the most important part of your website
People will visit your site to find some information or to perform a specific task it could be sharing photos, chatting or purchasing a particular product. Now, when your customer will land on your site and if he does not find what he needs in the first 3 seconds, he might leave the website.! This is what is called as bounce rates, that is the number of visitors that land on your website and leave immediately without surfing anything else.
With a well-planned website, you can keep your bounce rates to minimum which in turn will help you increase your revenues.!
Website Planning #4: What do you want your visitors to do
What if you land on a shopping site to purchase your favorite cell phone and you continuously see children rhymes saying “Johny Johny Yes Papa, Eating Sugar No Papa..”. Will not you leave the site and will look for some other site selling the same product. Yes.? Then why will not your visitor do this.?
So it is highly important to consider what do you want your visitor to do on your site. If it is an e-commerce site, probably you will want your visitor to purchase something or may surf through your offers. Put relevant and appealing objects on your landing page from where you appeal the visitor to do what you want him to do.!
Website Planning #5: How are you going to attract more visitors to your site
This is a crucial part in designing a website, where most of the people make mistakes. When you plan out for a website, the expansion strategy has to be very clear. Do you plan to get more visitors through SEO, back links and other referral sites or are your visitors going to visit your site through your social media promotions or PPC? If your site is a brand, which is loved by people, you might be getting a direct traffic to your site as well.
With all these considerations you need to plan out your site in order to get more number of visitors. If suppose you designed your site without any such thinking process and then you plan out to have more visitors through SEO, imagine what would be the condition of your site if it is not SEO friendly…!! What if you do not have proper content on your site..? Probably you will need to modify the whole site to make it SEO friendly and this will take time and will also mess up your budget.
So, now you would have got a clear idea about importance of website planning and the things to take care of.! Hope this guide on Website Planning would be of help.! For more such posts follow us on Facebook. 🙂
