Website Planning Template: Your Simple Step-By-Step Guide

People often build websites without a plan, and that’s fine for your site as well – if you don’t care how successful the site will be. Sure, you can just wing it and hope for the best. You might get lucky!

But if you want your site to have the absolute best chance of success, the kind of site that will accomplish the goals and aspirations you have for it, then you need a plan. We’ve been in the site-building business for a long time and have seen lots of great planning techniques. We’ve seen a few not-so-great techniques as well.

With all that experience under our belts, we’re here to share the kind of guide you’re hoping for. This website planning guide will get you the details you need, the resources to get more information, and a handy template to make the project as smooth as possible.

Ready to plan your website? Let’s go!

In this article:

Step 1: Goals and Requirements Stage

Before you can implement a plan, you need to know what you want and what you need. So let’s start at the beginning. Answer the following questions.

1. What are the goals of the site?

What is the purpose of the site? Is it to provide information? Get leads? Sell products? Book services? Some combination of these and more? These questions help determine what type of site you’ll build.

Be clear here at this first step. Everything else after this step should ladder back up to this. As elements are added to the plan, you can always double-check to make sure those elements play a part in meeting your goals.

The SMART method is a popular framework used to establish clear, actionable goals. It’s an acronym representing Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Let’s illustrate this with a hypothetical goal: “Get more people to call us for a quote for our services”. With this in mind, these are the questions you should consider:

Specific – What precisely do I want my visitors to do?

In this case, you aim to have more visitors click your CALL FOR QUOTE button. But, how many more? We’ll delve into that shortly.

Measurable – How will I monitor the effectiveness of my goal?

You could establish specific goals in your analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, to track the frequency of button clicks.

Achievable – What is a reasonable target number?

This is where you decide how many more clicks you’ll set as the goal. Aiming for 1,000 clicks a month may seem attractive, but if you’re currently only achieving 10, this target may be unrealistic, leading to frustration and disappointment. Instead, set a goal that’s a challenge, yet attainable. For this illustration, let’s consider 50 clicks a month as achievable. This figure can be adjusted as your strategy evolves.

Relevant – Is this goal relevant to my business objectives?

Are you setting a goal for vanity’s sake? For example, a goal of receiving high traffic from people who aren’t interested in purchasing from yo has no relevance to your business goals, but the high numbers might may you feel great. That’s a vanity metric. If your goal is similar, reassess it. On the other hand, if you’re a business offering high-ticket items requiring an in-depth, personalized sales process, encouraging prospects to call your sales team is integral. Therefore, this example goal of increasing the clicks on the Call button aligns with your business’s needs.

Time-Bound – Finally, determine a timeline for your goal. Without a deadline, the goal may be indefinitely postponed or forgotten amid day-to-day operations. Assigning a timeline ensures accountability and keeps you on track.

So, to wrap up:

The original goal was: “Get more people to call us for a quote for our services”.

After applying the SMART method, the refined goal could be:

“Boost the number of clicks on our CALL FOR QUOTE button by 500% within 90 days by enhancing its visibility on the website”.

2. Who is the target audience?

Who will be using the website? What are their needs, goals, and preferences? The group of people with common needs comprises your target audience. Once you understand this cohort, you can more easily tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to those users.

A common method of keeping your audience in mind is to create a user persona. A user persona is a fictional character that represents your target audience and is personified using information such as demographic information, goals, pain points, and behaviors. Learn more about using personas in digital marketing.

3. What are the key features and functionality of the website?

What do you want the website to be able to do? What features and functions will be most important to your target audience?

Will it be selling products or services? Will it contain a portfolio? Will it include a community or membership section? In this step, you’ll need to define the various parts of the website that will be necessary to meet your goals.

4. What overall look and feel do you imagine for the website?

What is the desired tone and style? Are you imagining a minimalist, airy site or perhaps a dark site that evokes a futuristic feel? Maybe you’d like a site that looks like a newspaper or magazine or one that resembles a modern social network?

Set the tone

To really bring all your style ideas together, consider creating a mood board.

You can use your mood board to outline and capture the feelings you are trying to evoke through color choice, font style, imagery, and more.
How a Web Design Mood Board Can Improve User Experience

Here’s an example of what a mood board for a moving company might look like.

Find inspiration

When you see other sites with a style similar to what you envision, make a note of it. Then narrow the list down to three to five sites you’d like to use as inspiration in design and function.

You can then reference these sites and your mood board throughout the design process to make sure your vision stays on track.

5. What are the content requirements?

What content will be included on the website? Who will be responsible for creating and maintaining the content? What is the content strategy?

An important aspect of content planning is doing your research first. To optimize the site for search engines, it is also important to develop a brief SEO plan. This includes keyword research to identify the terms and phrases that potential customers use to find sites like yours, which will help inform your content plan. You’ll also use those keywords in suggested titles, headings, and URL permalinks.

At this stage, you don’t need to have all the content written and ready for publishing, but you should have a summary of each piece of content you’ll include on the site. You can later include these summaries or content drafts as placeholder text when building the site.

6. What are the performance goals?

What are the desired outcomes of the website in terms of user engagement and conversion? How will you measure the success of the website?

WordPress.com plans include Jetpack Stats to help you track your site metrics

Sites hosted on WordPress.com come with important stats reports included. Other plugins are also available for sites hosted elsewhere, such as Google Analytics plugins.

7. What are your competitors doing?

Analyze the sites of your competitors and note market trends. You might be noting this as you’ve answered the previous questions. You’ve probably had some of your competitors in mind when considering design and functionality, for example.

The key here is not only to compete with those sites but to create a website that stands out and gives users a reason to choose yours instead.

By answering these questions, you can create a clear set of goals and requirements for your website planning project. This will help ensure that the final product meets the needs of both your business and your target audience.

Step 2: Define the Information Architecture (IA) of your site

1. Pages and permalinks

To create an effective website, you should determine which pages are needed. This includes breaking down the content you identified in Step 1 and listing each page, along with its corresponding permalink or URL. The list you create enables you to outline the content and messaging for each landing page on the site. Site layout impacts both the design and functionality, so consider that structure carefully.

2. Blog categories and calendar

If the site will have a blog, it is important to outline the categories that will be needed and create an editorial calendar for content. This planning step ensures the blog is regularly updated with relevant and engaging content that appeals to the target audience.

3. Sitemap

Now that you have a list of all the pages, it’s time to organize the structure and flow of the site. A common way to bring this all together is to create a sitemap. A sitemap is a visual representation of the website’s structure and hierarchy, outlining the main sections and pages of the website and the relationships between them. Not sure how to make a sitemap? Don’t worry. Plugins make sitemap creation a breeze. See our recommendations for the best sitemap plugins.

4. Navigation

Finally, it is important to outline the navigation structure of the site. Whereas a sitemap includes all pages of a site, the navigational menu will only contain the most important, high-level pages. This includes identifying the main sections of the site and creating a logical hierarchy of pages within each section. This will help users quickly find the information they need and ensure that the site is easy to use.

Step 3: Identify the Design, Content Layouts, and Branding Needed

Your website is more than just a digital space; it is an extension of your brand’s identity and values. At this stage, focus on crafting a visually captivating and authentic website that not only engages visitors but also reinforces your brand’s unique essence.

1. Identify the brand assets and colors

Before the site development process begins, gather any existing brand assets and colors that will be used in the design. This might include things like the company’s logo, typography, color palette, and imagery. This may also include guidelines detailing how a brand’s assets should be used in different contexts.

In some cases, existing logos and other brand assets aren’t digitized or suitable for use on a website. In this case, these assets, especially the logo, may need to be re-drawn in a vector format before use on the site.

If no brand assets exist, it’s time to get a logo designed, determine a set of appropriate colors to use, and make decisions on typography, font, and style. This is also the time to create a style guide to document all of the new elements of the brand.

2. Create page layouts

Now you have everything you need to start the design process. First, create wireframes. Wireframes are simple, black and white sketches of the website layout. They depict the placement of elements, such as text, images, and buttons, and help to define the overall layout and navigation of the website. You can find wireframe patterns in the WordPress.com pattern library or you can create your own using various available online tools.

After creating the initial wireframes, it’s essential to review and refine them based on feedback from stakeholders and usability testing. This is the time to make any necessary adjustments to the layout, navigation, and functionality of the website.

Once you have sign-off on the wireframe, you can create UI mockups. UI mockups are a more detailed version of the wireframes and include design elements such as typography, color, and imagery. These mockups provide a more realistic representation of the final website design.

Pro tip: Iterate and refine the wireframes and mockups throughout the design process to ensure they meet the goals and objectives of the website and provide an optimal user experience.

Once the wireframes and mockups have been refined and tested, it’s time to finalize the design and move on to the development phase.

Step 4: Put It All Together: Develop the Site

You’ve gathered all the essential information you need to create the site.

You know the goals and requirements of the site.
You understand the target audience, the content needed, and what the competition looks like.
You’ve defined the information architecture, including navigation, pages, and categories needed.
You’ve gathered all the brand assets needed and have mockups of the page layouts ready to go.

Time to make the site! You can either DIY it yourself or hire professionals to make it for you. With excellent WordPress themes and plugins to choose from, the design process can often be very straightforward.

Step 5: Launch Your Site With This Checklist

When all the hard work is complete, it’s time to tell the world about it, right? Wait, not so fast.

Take a deep breath and run through our launch checklist first to ensure you haven’t missed anything important. You only get one first launch, so make sure you’ve covered all your bases.

Step 6: Post-Launch Marketing

Now that your site is live to the world, the next phase begins. Check out the links below to continue your journey to website success.

Marketing and promoting a website after it is launched is crucial to ensure that the site is visible to potential visitors across different channels. Marketing is essential to help drive traffic, which can generate leads, sales, and revenue, or meet whichever goals you’ve set.

This is an ongoing process that helps to build and maintain the website’s reputation and increase traffic. By creating and distributing content that is informative, valuable, and engaging, you can establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry, and build trust and credibility with your target audience.

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Website Planning Template: Your Simple Step-By-Step Guide