The Ultimate Guide to Website Design Planning

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The perfect resource for photographers, designers and other creatives to do a website makeover for their website with a blueprint in hand.

Website Design Planning

The Ultimate Guide to Website Design is full of ideas, insights and strategies for creatives who want to plan and design a website design or to do a website re-design. This guide will help you to prepare everything needed for hand over to your Website developer, or it will give you a good framework to start the project yourself.

Creating a new website can be a huge undertaking, and for some people, this becomes really overwhelming, but with the right planning, you can create something truly remarkable and even end up enjoying the process.

It doesn’t matter if you’re building a 5-page website or a 20-page website, at the end of the day you need to ensure that you put the time in to make the site the best it can possibly be.

Read it now; then you can build or refine your website plan without the false starts and missteps that come with doing it alone.

What are the benefits of Website Planning?

Too many individuals and businesses jump at the opportunity to start building a website  without taking the time to think through their ideas and develop a plan.

Designing and creating a website is much like the building of a house. Building a house starts with an idea which gets drafted into a blueprint which incorporates all the aspects needed to build a house with good foundations, outer walls, windows, roofing, ceilings, inner walls, decorative aspects and more. Once these aspects are thought through an put on paper, then the building process can start.

In the same way, when you start designing or redesigning a website with a plan in mind, the purpose of your website becomes clear. Knowing your goals and direction you would like to move into make it easier to make other decisions regarding your website and easier to cut out elements that do not fit into your overall design.

Creating a plan also helps determine who you are creating the website for
1) Who is your target market?
2) Who is your ideal audience?
3) Who is your ideal client?

This then also helps determine what your website is for:
1) Is it for information?
2) Is it going to be for sales?
3) Is it going to be for a combination of information and sales?
4) Is it going to be your main source of income or just an extension of an existing shop?

Part of creating an actionable plan is to set up a budget.

  1. Many businesses spend thousands of Dollars per month on TV, magazine or newspaper ads, yet, when it comes to your website and online advertising, surprisingly little is allocated to what in many cases is where most of your client’s shop:
    • In your industry are any purchases happening online?
    • Did you know that a large percentage of purchases are all online?
    • How much of your current advertising budget can you divert?
    • Investing in your website shows your commitment to your business.
    • What can you afford to spend to start the process?
    • How much can you afford to spend monthly?
  2. Even building your own website has costs involved:
    • Themes – The ideal theme might cost you more than you planned.
    • Plugins – Mini applications to streamline your site could cost you a lot.
    • Licenses – Does your industry or government require you to register?
    • Yearly fees – To keep your domain name costs yearly or monthly fees.
    • Time – It takes many hours to build your own website.
  3. What you spend on your website, is usually what you’ll get out:
    • Your website is an investment in your business and one of the easiest tell-tale signs of whether you are displaying an amateur or professional product or service.
    • Try to decide on your budget before you start as this will affect many aspects of your design and planning.

It is important to decide who will be responsible for what, especially if there are different people needed to work on one website. Each person must be clearly instructed on which area they are responsible for and have each of the different people meet together several times in order to understand how their work will connect to other aspects of the design process.

Before any work is started, have each member of the team view the overall plan or blueprint of the website.

About The Ultimate Guide to Website Design Planning

We are going to look at all the different elements that make up a good website.

What You’ll Learn

Chapter 1

Website Branding: The strategy and assets

The most important thing to remember when planning your website design is making sure you have a well thought out branding strategy. This includes your assets like:

  1. The logo
  2. The typography (font use?)
  3. The colours, look, feel and positioning of your brand
  4. And also your target audience, mission and values that make your brand unique.

Read Chapter 1 What You’d Need for Your Website Branding Strategy Here

Chapter 2

Content Strategy: Creating your website content strategy that converts

The next thing you need for a website redesign is the content. Your Content Strategy for your website will include the copy you need for the different pages. Your brand strategy and target audience will help you with setting the tone and voice for

Read Chapter 2 Create Your Website Content Strategy that Converts

Chapter 3

Website Photography:12 Tips for Website photography that will have your clients drooling

One of the most important things when looking at a website redesign is the photos or images you use for the website. In Chapter 3 we will look at some tips on how to get the best photography that will help you create a website that will make the visitors want to come back for more.

Chapter 3 Coming Soon

Chapter 4

Website SEO

One of the most important things to keep in mind with a website re-design is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Getting found by the Search Engines is a way to make sure that people actively seeking for your services find you and with the right planning this can be a relatively easy and low-cost option.

Especially if the site is already doing well with the Search engines, you have to make sure that your re-design plans are not going to play havoc with this prior hard work.

Chapter 4 Coming Soon

Chapter 5

Website Conversion

A focus of a website needs to be the conversion. It does not help to create a website if visitors are unsure about the next step. It this chapter we look at the different things playing a role in conversion including your website copy, the layout of elements like buttons and opt-in boxes and other things that can play a role in conversion.

Chapter 5 Coming Soon

Chapter 6

Website Marketing

When you plan a new website design or website redesign, you need to start to think how you will promote your website. You can not just build your site and expect it to be found. There are a few different options you can consider when thinking about website marketing and in this chapter we’ll discuss some of them.

Chapter 6 Coming Soon

Chapter 7

Website and Social Media

Social media and your website should work seamlessly together to promote your online brand. Social Media is one of the leading marketing strategies at the moment and bringing back to your website is very important. In this chapter we’ll look at the best ways to integrate social media with your website.

Chapter 7 Coming Soon

Chapter 8

Website vs Marketing Funnels

What is the difference between a Website and a Marketing Funnel and should you choose one over the other or have both in this chapter we’ll learn all about marketing funnels and their place in your website strategy.

Chapter 8 Coming Soon

With a well-planned, beautifully executed website, you’ll enjoy:

◉ Better name recognition

◉ More partnership opportunities

◉ Increased sales (and profits)

◉ Higher fees

◉ More speaking engagements

And best of all, your website will present the professional, polished image you want the world to see.


Anchen le Roux

Owner and Lead Developer at Simply Digital Design. Lover of WordPress & the WP-Community. Passionate about simple, green and nomadic living. WCJHB Organiser and Founder of the Great WordPress Virtual Summit

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