Margin Media

We have all heard it before  "Fail to plan. Plan to fail" and it couldn't be more true with redesigning your company's website.

When you make the decision, or get the go ahead, to redesign the company website you will probably get that rush of excitement and start picturing all the cool things and looks that you want for the website.

However it is not yet time to rush out and engage a website designer to draw up some visual concepts that meet your initial thoughts.

You have now entered the very important planning stage (also called the Discovery Phase). The planning phase is where you gather areas of your business (i.e. marketing, sales, management, business development and IT) to collaborate and define the following:

1. Who are the websites audience (or who do you want the website targeted to)?

2. What are the main objectives of the website - are you wanting to sell from the website, show your services, generate sales leads, grow brand awareness, recruit staff....

3. What is the desired perception of your company that you want website users to take away form their visit. Do you want to show your company as fun, serious, experts, modern, professional...?

4. What colours are you wishing to incorporate into the website. Do you have a corporate style guide that must be followed?

5. What calls to action do you want visitors to take - contact us, subscribe, buy now etc. Try writing a few of them out and keep them simple not long winded.

6. What type of layouts and design do you prefer and what do you NOT want to on your website. Have some research into what websites your target audience look at now and what they like. Talk too professional website consultants that can help you with this.

7. What features and functionality would you like your website to have - blog, RSS feed, client area, staff area, knowledge base, frequently asked questions....

8. How you would like your pages structured within the website. This is a very important step. It allows you to ensure you have a blueprint of your website structure well before any design starts. The last thing you want is to fall in love with a graphical design to only find out you cannot add all the important content and call to actions that you have prepared. Never allow a design to dictate the content for your website.

9. How you will set up your navigation options on the website - 1 navigation bar, multiple navigation sections, breadcrumbs, search bar.

10. What content you have ready and what you need to have created by a professional content developer.

Following the above website planning tips will make the whole website project much easier to manage. It could also reduce expense and time to completion. The information you collect above will enable you to create an outstanding Creative Brief for your website designers.