Building, redesigning or revamping a website is more than selecting a nice design from a catalog like you would for a kitchen renovation. You want to make sure that it’s done right and is backed with a strategy in place.
Before you start thinking about what features you would like to include on your website and figuring out the design, it’s important that you first have a solid website strategy in place. Without one, you could revamp a website that is too loosely based on intuition lacking clearly defined goals.
By first developing your website strategy, you will have a clear understanding of how and why it should be designed in a specific way.
A website strategy consists of 4 crucial elements:
You can read in detail about these 4 elements by clicking here
After you have worked out the website strategy, you can start exploring what elements you would like to feature on your website. This includes the different tools/add-ons you would like to implement and the pages you would like have.
Take time to explore business websites specifically in your industry to give you some ideas. When you find something you like, refer back to your website strategy to see if it would make sense to have it on your website.
Would it be wise to maybe talk about some example features to include on website, especially ones that would be useful for businesses in your industry? Or does it really vary from one company to another and personal preference?
However, some industries are not the most advanced when it comes to websites. If it is the case for you, It would be wise to explore websites from other industries.
A wireframe is a like a blueprint of a building. It constitutes the overall page layout of a website’s content and maps out the placements and size ratios of the different elements that will be included in your website.
The wireframe does not include details such as the colours, fonts or other graphic design details. The focus here is deciding how to arrange the website layout and not necessarily how nice it looks just yet.
Your website content does not need to be produced from scratch. You most likely already have existing content (online and offline) that could be used for your new website.
A content audit will help you organize your content into different categories (blog, videos, eBooks, brochures, etc), rate the success of each content piece thus far, and determine if they can be recycled for other purposes.
By doing the content audit, you will have a much easier time coming up with the content for your new website and even give you ideas for upcoming marketing campaigns.
With the website strategy, wire framing and auditing done, you can now work on the details.
This step may take a while as you need to invest time for every element of your website where you need to either design, produce or implement. There will be multiple revisions and will require the collaboration of different people with different skill sets.