Irrespective of whether you are building a website all on your own or hiring an agency to build one for you, a good plan is essential, which, however, can be drawn up by you alone. To be precise, it will include core elements such as ‘goals’, ‘audience’, ‘strategy’ and a few more things that are detailed below for your guidance.

Elements Of a Web Plan

However, to ensure a successful outcome, you probably need to take into account the following elements. This may entail jotting down some important points in your notebook as also conducting a full-blown resources audit and guided discovery project – both requiring intense study and research.

Identify Your Mission

As a first step towards developing an effective website, you need to identify your organization’s mission, as also the mission and goals that you want to portray in your new website. If you already have a website that you want to develop further, try and locate its loopholes and see why it had failed in its mission to achieve its goal. And then, rectify those pitfalls. Also, identify the roles that the members of your planning team are supposed to play.

Check Your Target Audience

Unless you are reasonably aware of the type of audience your website will be catering to, the entire project will go kaput. In fact, you need to know the type of audience and how they are likely to interact with your organization. Also important will be the type of message that you want to impart on the audience. Remember, people are curious to know about the unknown and so, if you have any special message or information on any subject (need not be related to your product or services) think of including it within your website.

Be Sure of Content

‘The heart of the matter’, as they literally say, is the Content. In fact, the life of your website will revolve round its Content. If the Content is relevant, precise and to-the-point, your website will reach stellar heights. Otherwise, it will go down the Mariana Trench in the Atlantic Ocean. Also, you need to think in terms of how you will describe the content types, keeping in mind the various formats, such as PDF file, multi-page document, Power point file, video, audio, etc. It may also be a good idea to outline in brief what content will appear and which segment of audience it is meant for.

Choosing the Design

Choosing a design that will suit your website could be a tricky business. A design that goes merrily with a website that sells lingerie may not suit one that deals in car tires. One of the easiest ways, however, would be to look out for designs that some of your competitors have used. Of course, this does not mean that you follow them blindly; but you can always take a clue by looking at their typography, imaging styles, animation styles, etc. Also, ask yourself what message your visuals should communicate about you – Professional, Social, Practical or any other type. And above all, it should be globally attractive, because you never know from which part of our lonely planet your customer may come.

Navigational Structure

While planning a website project it is essential that you identify content categories and draw up a navigation structure for arranging that content. You may also ask yourself how your audience can best locate the information when they come to your website, considering the perspective of visitors who obviously are not familiar with your internal structure.

Finally, the Measurement of Success

You surely need to identify what you aspire to gain from the website, including benchmarks and how you plan to measure your success. This may, for instance,  include increasing your Facebook subscribers by 100 percent in the first year in order to increase your outreach.