When it comes to your new website, the first thing that needs to be done is proper planning. As humans, we plan everything… we plan weddings. We plan vacations. We plan for dinner and for weekends. If there’s an important decision to be made, you can bet that it would benefit from a good amount of planning.
So, where do you begin when planning your custom website? Today we’re going to look at how we go about it here at Imagine Monkey. We take a very organic approach to our planning. We like to gather the information that we need, let it stew and then work it into a structured, organized calendar that we act upon during the design process.
First, know what your website needs to achieve
One of the most beneficial questions you can answer during the planning phase is, “What is the end goal of my website?” Try to narrow your answer down to a single, specific result rather than a list. For example, if you’re creating an e-commerce website, obviously you want to attract visitors, showcase your product lines and convert visitors into customers.
But, there’s a single thread that unites these three goals: you want to make sales. Once you’ve got a straightforward goal, it becomes a lot easier to fashion the design process around that goal. Whenever a tough choice needs to be made, you need only ask yourself, “What decision will result in more sales?”
Next, build your process around the desired result
From the very first design element to the final adjustments, every action taken should work towards your desired result. Knowing that, it’s a lot easier to structure the workflow in a way that speaks directly to what you need. Rather than imitating competitors — competitors who may or may not have the same desired result — you’re striking out on your own, staking a claim and working to expand it.
So, at Imagine Monkey, we start with the results. The results are your claim. Everything that we build from then on expands the scope and funnels traffic towards that goal. The end result is a website that does what you want rather than just looks like you want. Of course, as our portfolio shows, we believe that aesthetic design is as important as content design, however, they should always be cooperating and working towards the same thing
A beautiful website is useless if it is ineffective… and that’s why planning is important. Rather than acting on impulses, imitating competitors or making it up as you go along, a planned website design creates a site that is intended to work, not just a site that is intended to look like it works. At Imagine Monkey, we start by figuring out the defining aspects of you and your business, what you do and, more importantly, what you want to do. From there, we peel away the layers until we’re left with a single core concept, a lone purpose… and from that purpose, we devise a plan.
