Whether you’re hiring a developer/designer or building your website yourself, you can save time and money by planning as much as you can in advance. Ask yourself these five questions to get started:
- What do you want this website to accomplish? By listing all the things you need your website to do, you will get a good idea of how much technical skill will be required to build it. Presumably, you want to educate the public about your mission. You may also need a member or staff portal, an online community, gated content or lead magnets, a way to collect subscriber email addresses, a way to accept donations or other payments, a client intake form, a way to screen volunteers or process job applications, and /or a way to refer clients to outside resources.
- How will the writing and design support your objectives? What kind of content do you need? Think about what people need to know about you and where they will find that information. At a minimum, you will want the basic pages: Home, About, and Contact. You will probably want a Programs or Services page as well, and a way to take payments or donations. You may also have a blog, a photo gallery, impact statements, and testimonials. Your site can have any kind of content you want. You won’t be able to anticipate everything you’ll want to put on the site, but it’s smart to try to predict the basic categories of content you’ll provide. Also, give some thought to how people will find your content. You’ll want to optimize your site for search by creating a site architecture that makes sense, avoiding technical errors, and providing authoritative and useful content that includes your keywords (more in-depth information about search engine optimization can be found in the MarCom section of this site).
- How will you take payments and for what? Will you need a whole storefront solution like WooCommerce or will you simply have a payment or donation page? How will you make it easy for your customers to understand and use? Will you use a third-party solution like Stripe or PayPal so you can more easily guarantee security? Will you monetize your site with outside advertising or affiliate links (and are those practices considered ethical in your field?). Save yourself time and hassle by researching what you’ll need upfront. If you’re building your site yourself on a platform like WordPress or Wix, make sure you’ve chosen a hosting plan that allows you to take payments.
- How will the site’s language and design fit in with your current branding? Your website is the face of your organization online. It needs to reflect your brand and culture. It should be consistent with any marketing materials you’ve already produced, from your logo to your business cards to your social media. Use a similar tone in your language, use the same fonts, and use the same color scheme. If you’re just starting out, you can use the website to start the branding process. But no matter what comes first, keep the brand consistent everywhere.
- How will you arrange information? Your pages should be arranged in a way that feels intuitive to the person visiting your site. It is helpful to frame things as an outline, as you would for a table of contents. This outline can become your site’s navigation menu once you’ve created your pages.
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