7 Planning Items to Help Jump-Start Your Website Build

Before any work can be done on a website, you need to get organized. Whether you are using a website builder or are ready to hire a developer, having the right information ready will make your website build much easier. Here are a few tips to help you along the way:

1. Define your website goals. What is it you are trying to achieve with your website? The reasons may vary by business type but having a clear understanding of what your are trying to accomplish helps you and everyone involved in the website building process think about the best way to design and meet your goals.
2. Ready Your Logo. Take the time to evaluate your company’s logo. Do you have one ready? Does it need a refresh? Logos can act as a building block for your site’s theme and help to define a color palette as well. Have a high-res copy of your logo ready for your developer to use.
3. Write Your Own Copy. This is such an important aspect because it’s your voice and your messaging. Don’t let this fall into the hands of a designer or developer – its not their forte. Even if your copy is choppy at first it’s OK. Like your logo, your copy provides the website designer/developer with more color about you and your business which ultimately helps to shape the look and feel of the site.
4. Collect Your Images. Sometimes waiting is the hardest part…and can delay your website build progress. Having your images and photos ready for a designer/developer to review saves a lot of time! Put them in a Dropbox folder (or file sharing service of your liking) and share them with your website build team. You can always add more but at least they are easily accessible and ready to use.
5. Layout Your Site. You can do this! You don’t have to wait for your web designer/developer. You’ve already thought about your goals, branding ,copy and images…now where is it going to to go? We typically start out with HOME, ABOUT, SERVICES, BLOG (if there is one) and CONTACT as the basic site structure. However, each business is different, so there may be additional pages required to support things like product information and eCommerce transactions. A thumbnail sketch of how you see things organized helps everyone involved in creating your website see your vision.
6. Create Actionable Events. It’s great to have beautiful content – gorgeous photos and smart copy goes a long way, especially at making really good first impressions on new site visitors. However, think about what YOU want THEM to do when they are on a page. Fill out a quote request? Subscribe to a newsletter? Buy something? Make each page purposeful by creating an actionable event so your visitors do more than just move on.
7. Put it all together. Now that you have your goals, branding, copy, images, site layout and actionable events for each page, you are dangerous! Put them all in a Dropbox folder and you are ready to have conversations with any web designer/developer.

This content organization approach will help to streamline your website building conversations/process and create one, centralized place for all of your assets that you can update at any time. Designers and Developers will appreciate the structure and spend less time chasing you for assets and more time focusing on creating a beautiful website for you.

Interested in building a website with us? We follow the same process above and would love to work with you! Call CAVU Media at 888-791-8555 or drop us a line using the form on our contact page!