Well maybe I should have started out my posts with this, but it’s better late than never right? And this is the reason planning is so important.

A web designer/developer can help give you suggestions and plan your website, but it’s always great when you take the time to plan out how you want your website to work and what content you would like your website to include, because in the end it is your website and it represents your business.

People may skip the planning to save on time or do not realize how important this step is. But once they get started with the website project, there may be some need to redo work or some unexpected obstacles may come up without proper planning

When you take the time to think through your project before starting it you can usually expect some of these obstacles and come up with a plan for avoiding them. This will actually save time, money and frustration for and me (your web developer) in the end.

Here are a few things we suggest that you think about in your planning to help make your website a success

• What are you trying to accomplish with your website? You need to think about the goals of your website. Ex. Is it to educate or to promote?
• Decide on your target audience and try to determine their interests. Your website should provide the information that your audience is looking for.
• Figure out the navigation (or menu) for your website. Try to think about this as a potential client and make it as user friendly as possible. (For more info read our post on navigation - How Easy is Your Site to Navigate?).
• Think about what your Call to Action (or CTA) is. What do you want the users that find your website to do once they find your site?
• Create a list of keywords that can be used on your website to increase your ranking on search engines. For more info see our post on keywords - Are the Right Keywords the Most Popular Keywords?

There are definitely more items to think about when developing your website, but these can be discussed further with your website developer

We ultimately want to make our clients happy at Prairie Orchid Media and if planning is not completed the following things could happen:

• Do-overs or backtracking because things need to be redone causes delays, pushed out timelines and incur extra costs
• We (the web developers) could make assumptions as to how you want the content to be set up, but this may not be the way you (the client) want it.
• The cost for the project could be more than the original quote because necessary extra items need to be added to the project.
• Client and/or web developer frustration or confusion because things may be going wrong.
• A website that falls short of its goals.
• Poor Return on Investment (ROI).

So, to keep everyone as happy as possible and create the best product for our clients, planning is necessary.

If you need any help with your website – let’s chat. We would love to hear from you - please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..