Deciding that your business needs a new website is the easy part. Deciding what should actually go on it takes a little more thought.

It can be tempting to jump straight into choosing colours, looking at layouts or deciding whether the homepage needs a particularly impressive photograph. But good business website planning starts well before the visual design.

Before your web designer starts designing anything, you need to understand what the website is supposed to achieve, who it needs to speak to and what information those people will need when they arrive.

A little planning at the beginning can save a surprising amount of time, money and head-scratching later.

Start with what the website needs to achieve

The first question isn’t what should my website look like?

It’s what do I need my website to do?

For many small businesses, the main objective is fairly straightforward: generate enquiries from potential customers.

But that isn’t always the only job.

Your website might need to:

• Generate telephone or email enquiries
• Encourage visitors to request a quote
• Explain complicated services
• Establish credibility
• Showcase previous work
• Generate bookings
• Sell products
• Provide information to existing customers
• Attract customers from particular locations
• Support wider marketing activity

There may be several objectives, but it helps to identify the most important one.

If generating enquiries is the priority, for example, that should influence everything from the structure of the website to the prominence of contact details and calls to action.

The purpose comes first. The design follows.

Think about who will actually use your website

Your website isn’t really being designed for you.

It’s being designed for your customers.

That sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy for businesses to approach a website entirely from their own perspective.

Think about the people you want to attract.

What are they looking for?

What problems are they trying to solve?

What questions are they likely to have?

And what might stop them from contacting you?

Someone arriving on a website for the first time is usually trying to establish a few basic things very quickly:

Am I in the right place?

Does this company provide what I need?

Do they look trustworthy?

Can they help someone like me?

What do I do next?

Good website planning makes those answers easy to find.

Decide what pages your website needs

Once you understand the purpose and audience, you can start planning the structure of your website.

A typical small business website might include:

• Home
• About
• Services
• Individual service pages
• Portfolio or case studies
• Testimonials
• FAQs
• Blog or advice
• Contact

But there isn’t a magic number of pages every business website should have.

A relatively simple business may only need a handful. A company offering several distinct services could benefit from individual pages explaining each one properly.

Try not to squeeze everything onto the homepage simply because it feels easier.

Your homepage should introduce the business and guide visitors towards the information that’s relevant to them. It doesn’t necessarily need to contain every piece of information about everything you do.

For a broader look at structure, content, usability and the other elements involved, see my Complete Guide to Website Design.

Plan your services before planning your pages

This is particularly important for businesses offering several services.

Write down everything you actually want to promote.

Then consider whether those services deserve their own pages.

For example, a company offering five clearly different services may be better served by five useful service pages than one enormous Services page containing a paragraph about each.

There is a usability benefit because customers can quickly find information relevant to them.

There can also be an SEO benefit. A dedicated page gives you considerably more opportunity to explain a particular service and target the searches potential customers might use to find it.

The structure of your website should reflect the structure of your business rather than forcing everything into a predetermined template.

Sketch out the navigation

You don’t need specialist software for this.

A piece of paper will do perfectly well.

Start with Home at the top and sketch out the main sections underneath it.

If Services contains several individual services, place those beneath it. Do the same with products, sectors, locations or other sections where appropriate.

You’re essentially creating a simple map of the website.

This can reveal problems surprisingly quickly.

If one section suddenly contains 15 pages while everything else has two, it may need reorganising. If an important service takes four clicks to reach, it probably needs bringing closer to the surface.

Good website navigation shouldn’t make visitors feel as though they’re solving an escape room.

Work out what content you’ll need

Content is one of the biggest causes of delays in website projects.

The website structure is agreed, the design is ready to go… and then everybody realises someone still needs to write 12 pages of copy.

Planning your content early avoids this.

For each page, think about:

• What the page needs to explain
• The questions customers are likely to ask
• The main action you want visitors to take
• Photographs or illustrations you’ll need
• Testimonials that could support the page
• Downloads, brochures or other useful material

You don’t necessarily need finished copy before speaking to a web designer, but knowing what needs to be created gives everyone a much clearer picture of the project.

Don’t treat website copy as filler

Your website copy isn’t something added afterwards to fill the spaces left by the design.

It is a fundamental part of the website.

Good copy explains what you do, answers questions, demonstrates expertise and gives potential customers reasons to choose you.

It also gives search engines the information they need to understand your website.

A page containing a photograph, a headline and two vague sentences might look wonderfully minimalist, but it doesn’t give your customers – or Google – very much to work with.

Design and content should support one another.

Gather your photography and brand assets

Before the project starts, it’s worth gathering together the materials you already have.

That might include:

• Your logo
• Brand guidelines
• Corporate colours
• Fonts
• Photography
• Staff photographs
• Product images
• Previous brochures
• Testimonials
• Accreditations
• Membership logos
• Case studies

Don’t worry if you don’t have all of these. You may not need them.

But knowing what already exists helps identify what still needs to be created.

If your existing logo is a 200-pixel JPEG rescued from an email sent in 2009, now might also be an excellent time to consider whether your logo and brand identity needs some attention.

Decide what you want visitors to do

Every important page should have a purpose.

Once somebody has read it, what would you ideally like them to do next?

That could be:

Request a quote

Call your business

Book an appointment

Send an enquiry

View another service

Download something

Make a purchase

These are your calls to action.

They don’t all need to be enormous brightly coloured buttons shouting at people, but the next step should be obvious.

A visitor who has decided they’re interested shouldn’t then have to go hunting for a way to contact you.

Think about functionality before the build starts

Make a list of anything your website needs to do, rather than simply display.

For example:

• Contact forms
• Quote request forms
• Appointment booking
• Ecommerce
• Online payments
• Customer accounts
• Mailing-list signup
• Maps
• Search
• Filtering
• Downloads
• Galleries
• Members-only content
• Integration with other business systems

Some features are relatively straightforward. Others can significantly affect the scope, cost and timescale of the WordPress website development required.

Discovering halfway through a website build that it also needs to communicate with a specialist booking platform, CRM and accounting system isn’t ideal.

The earlier these requirements are identified, the better.

Consider SEO from the beginning

SEO shouldn’t be something bolted onto a finished website.

The searches you want to appear for can influence the pages you create, how they’re organised and what information those pages contain.

Think about the services people might search for and, where relevant, the locations you want to target.

A business serving several distinct areas, for example, may need a different website structure from one serving customers throughout the UK. My Complete Guide to Local SEO for Small Businesses looks at this in considerably more detail.

You don’t need to become an SEO expert before commissioning a website, but thinking about search visibility while the structure is being planned can prevent considerable restructuring later.

It’s easier to start with a strong foundation than to add one underneath a house that’s already built.

Sort out your domain, hosting and email

These aren’t the glamorous bits of planning a new business website, but they’re important.

Make sure you know:

• Where your domain is registered
• Who owns the domain
• Who has access to the account
• Where your existing website is hosted
• Who provides your business email
• Whether anything needs transferring

Your business should retain control of its important digital assets.

Your business should retain control of its important digital assets.

Domains, analytics accounts and other key services should normally be registered in the business’s name rather than belonging solely to a designer, developer or marketing company.

It’s also worth thinking about what happens after the website launches. WordPress website care, hosting and maintenance should be considered as part of the project rather than only when something eventually goes wrong.

People change suppliers. Businesses evolve. Someone eventually retires to a cottage in Devon.

Keeping ownership clear makes life considerably easier when circumstances change.

Establish a realistic budget

A website budget shouldn’t simply be based on finding the lowest figure someone will quote.

Think about what the business actually needs.

A straightforward brochure website for a small local business is a very different project from a large website containing dozens of services, bespoke functionality, ecommerce or third-party integrations.

Your budget may also need to account for:

• Copywriting
• Professional photography
• Logo or branding work
• Illustration
• Ecommerce functionality
• Specialist integrations
• Hosting
• Ongoing maintenance

It can be useful to look at typical website design pricing before deciding what is realistic for your project.

Being open about budget also helps your web designer recommend an appropriate approach rather than designing a solution that turns out to be completely unrealistic.

Think about the timescale

If your website needs to launch for a particular event, campaign, business opening or product launch, establish that date at the beginning.

Then work backwards.

Remember that the project doesn’t consist solely of design and development.

Time may also be required for content preparation, photography, feedback, amendments, testing, domain changes and final approval.

And if six people need to approve every sentence, allow a little more time. Possibly several geological eras.

What should you give your web designer?

You don’t need to arrive with a 97-page website specification.

But the more useful information you can provide, the easier it is to understand the project.

A good starting brief should explain:

• What your business does
• Who your customers are
• What you want the website to achieve
• The services or products you want to promote
• The pages you think you’ll need
• Any functionality required
• Websites you like or dislike
• Existing brand assets
• Your approximate budget
• Your preferred timescale

If you’re thinking about a new website, my web design questionnaire covers many of these questions and can help you put together a useful starting brief.

Your web designer can then help turn those requirements into an appropriate structure and solution.

That’s part of the job.

Don’t design the website before hiring the designer

Planning is valuable.

Trying to design the entire website yourself before handing it to a designer is less so.

You don’t need to decide that the homepage requires three columns, followed by a photograph on the left, followed by four blue boxes, followed by a testimonial carousel.

Concentrate on the information, objectives and requirements.

A good web designer should then determine the most effective way to present them.

It’s rather like briefing an architect. Explain how many bedrooms you need and how you want to use the house. You probably don’t need to arrive having already decided where every supporting wall goes.

Good website planning makes everything easier

Learning how to plan a new business website isn’t about producing an enormous technical specification before contacting a designer.

It’s about making the important decisions early.

Understand your audience. Decide what the website needs to achieve. Work out what you need to say. Identify the pages, content and functionality required, and make sure the practical things such as domains, hosting and existing assets are accounted for.

The plan doesn’t have to be set in stone. In fact, it will probably evolve once you start discussing the project with your web designer.

But beginning with a clear understanding of what the website needs to accomplish gives the design process a much stronger foundation.

And that’s considerably better than starting with “I quite like this shade of blue.”