Planning your website project

A goal without a plan is just a wish. Preparation is the key to success.

It goes without saying that our world is extremely internet-dependent, and communicating effectively with your target audience online is essential for your enterprise to thrive and grow. Planning your website project is the first step to ensuring that your finished website meets all your business’s online marketing goals and that your project stays on budget and on time.

A powerful and beautiful website starts with a well-thought-out plan

Your website is your most important marketing asset. You can be sure that prospective clients and customers have checked out your business online before deciding if they will contact you.

Crafting an attractive and dynamic website takes planning and know-how. It is important for your site to be well-constructed and easy to navigate, to be visually pleasing, and to contain clear and compelling content. Your site should also have the features and tools that you need in order to grow your business. A site that is thrown together with little thought or care will turn potential customers or clients away.

I will help you clarify your online marketing goals and together we will create a plan that is tailored to your schedule, to your skill level, and to how involved you wish to be in each phase of your site’s development and maintenance.

  • Our first hour of planning time is offered at no charge. In this hour we will talk about our ideas for your site, and determine if we are a good fit.
  • If you choose to go ahead and work with me, any subsequent planning time will be included in your quote. Taking the time to create a solid plan is a good investment for you – the clearer the plan, the fewer unexpected costs will crop up later.
  • Take a look at my Project Timeline and Payment terms page for an idea of how your project might evolve.

The added benefit of working with me is that I can show you how to expand your marketing activities beyond your website and build engagement with existing and potential clients through email campaigns, social media updates, product launches and promotional events.

Whether you want a simple online brochure, a member site for your community, a full-fledged business site, or an online store for your products or services, contact me to arrange your complimentary 30-minute call. Together we can explore the possibilities — with no obligation at all!


A sample Plan outline | Some of the key areas that we might cover as we work together to create your site

Depending on where you are in your website process, you may need some or all of the following:

Domain name and web hosting

  • Purchasing a domain name, choosing a hosting plan, setting up an email address

Features and functions

  • Deciding what tools and functionality should be built into your site so that you can meet your marketing and business goals

Organizing your content

  • Planning and organizing content so that your visitors clearly understand exactly what you’re offering
  • Crafting the 4 essential web pages — Home, About, Products and/or Services, and Contact
  • Categorize your posts in an organized manner so that you will inform, engage, and inspire your audience
  • Showcasing your products and services with portfolio and testimonial pages
  • Adding images, videos, RSS feeds and other features to keep your site current and dynamic

Design and layout

  • Creating a design and layout that showcases your great idea and is also beautiful and engaging
  • Incorporating your branding — colors, logos, design elements — into the design

Selling goods and services from your website

  • Building an online store that is customer-friendly, attractive, and suited to the types of products and services you are offering
  • Constructing a members-only area to allow premium content such as courses, downloads or secure content for “insiders” only

Connecting your site to social media

  • Integrating social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn with your website so you can automatically post your posts to those accounts – what a time saver!

Email marketing

  • Using an email marketing service such as MailChimp to communicate to and engage with your audience. You can even set up autoresponders to deliver scheduled content such as a course or inspirational messages
  • Incorporating sign-up forms on your website so that visitors can easily subscribe to your email list

Site performance

  • Optimizing your images
  • Caching your pages to speed up your site (this is where having techie skills is really handy!)

Site security

  • Securing your site from hackers with powerful plugins
  • Setting up automatic backups of your content, themes, and images

Maintaining your site

  • Updating WordPress and plugins
  • Optimizing your WordPress database

As you can see, the options are almost limitless. A well thought-out plan will keep your website project on track and enable me to deliver exactly what you have signed up for.


As the saying goes, “a journey starts with one step”. Take the first step and start growing your great idea.

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