I love the thrill of a new website project. As your brand’s online face, your website is an essential tool for your organization and planning for a website is a big (but exciting!) project. From coffee-fueled brainstorming sessions to the creative website magic that makes our clients smile, there’s a lot that goes into building a new website. Even if you’re not starting from scratch, there’s a lot to consider. For many of our clients, building a new website or planning a full redesign is something they don’t do often so I’ve pulled together this website planning guide that outlines the whole process and important tips for successful projects along the way.
So, let’s talk about how to prep for your website project—whether it’s a full redesign, a shiny new build, or an exciting new feature. We’re here to be your guides through this digital wilderness, but like any good hiking trip, a successful project depends on teamwork and preparation. The web design process is a little different for everyone. Because we create custom sites for each of our clients, the website planning, content creation and development are all unique but there are some aspects that are important for all web projects. Without further ado, here are my website planning tips to help you make your web design journey as smooth as possible.
Step 1: Define Your Goals and Vision
Step 2: Assemble Your Internal Team
Step 3: Audit Your Current Website and Assets
Step 4: Align on Timelines and Milestones
Step 5: Manage Internal Approvals
Step 7: Keep Up the Momentum During the Mid-Project Stretch
Step 8: Understand the Launch Process
Step 1: Define Your Goals and Vision
Before we hit the trail, let’s map out where we’re headed. What’s the goal of your website? Are we climbing to the peak of lead generation? Exploring the valley of better user experience? Or maybe you’re refreshing your brand to match that epic new logo? Knowing your destination helps guide every decision we make and it’s a website planning tip you can’t skip.
The Front-End Vision
When you’re dreaming of your website, the front end is probably what you think about the most. This is the “pretty” side of a website and the experience your customers have online. When you start to plan a website, you’ll want to think about your target audience. Are they mountain climbers looking for gear or coffee lovers searching for the perfect roast? (Coffee and new outdoor gear…sign me up!) No matter who your perfect customer is, the clearer you are about the target audience you’re speaking to, the more effective your site will be. If your brand positioning has shifted—new target audience, new products, a new vibe—let’s get that squared away upfront.
If your vision is a little fuzzy, here are some ways to clear it up:
- Spend some time looking at other sites. You can start with competitor sites but don’t restrict yourself to your industry. Sometimes the best inspiration comes where you least expect it.
- If you have some time, survey your customers to understand what they love about your brand and what would make their experience with you even better.
- Talk to other departments in your company to see what their goals are and explore how your online presence can support those goals.
The more examples you can provide of what you like (and what you don’t like), the more likely you are to get a website design and content that meets your goals without endless rounds of revisions. Once we understand the direction you’re headed we can help in providing examples as well.
The Back-End Functionality
The back end of a website might not be the most glamorous but this is where you and your team will be spending time. We need to understand what type of website builder capabilities you need – will you be creating new pages, will you need to update information frequently, do we need custom code or integrations with e-commerce or CRM solutions? These functional parts of the project scope are important to fully understand since they can drastically change the cost of the site creation and impact your timeline. At this point, nothing is impossible so dream big. We’ll help you understand the development process, cost and timing for your dream features so you can decide which features are most important.
Step 2: Assemble Your Internal Team
As your website partner, we’re handling the heavy lifting of design and development, but you’ll also need a solid team on your side. Making sure you have a team ready to manage the website project is another important step of website planning that you don’t want to skip. Here’s who should be involved:
- Someone to provide feedback and approvals
- A content manager to handle updates and creation
- Your go-to person for all things project-related
Your team’s participation keeps everything moving forward. Make sure they’ve got the time and bandwidth to dedicate to the project. Clear roles and open communication will make all the difference.
A new website is an exciting project and we’ll do everything in our power to make it fun but it does take time so even if you’re a small organization and one person will be handling all the roles, make sure that you carve out time each week to focus on your project. This is a chance to create something amazing for your brand!
Step 3: Audit Your Current Website and Assets
Before building something new, it’s essential to take stock of what you already have. If you don’t have a lot of insight as to how your site is currently being used, a UX studies and audits to identify pain points and usability issues can help you prioritize new features. At Trebletree, we use tools like Hotjar and VWO to better understand how customers us your site and identify places where customers get frustrated or drop off.
Things you can do to make the website planning process more efficient:
- Listing must-keep pages and assets
- Gathering analytics and customer feedback
- Ensuring your brand materials are up to date
This step sets the foundation for a site that’s not only functional but also aligned with your goals.
As we build out the plan for your website, we’ll create a detailed site map, making sure everything aligns with your goals and feels cohesive. We love to use octopus.do to visualize the website pages and make sure we’ve got everything you need organized in a way that makes sense to your customers. Trust us, having a clear vision is like having a compass on a hike—it’ll keep us from wandering in circles.
It’s important to make sure your team and the leadership of your company is aligned with this plan before we start building. This helps avoid costly changes and timeline disruptions.
Step 4: Align on Timelines and Milestones
Momentum is everything. We’ll provide a detailed timeline with key milestones. Before we finalize a timeline, make sure you are honest about how much time you have to commit to reviewing and providing feedback each week. This way our project management team can provide you with a realistic schedule. The last thing we want is to set an aggressive timeline that will only cause frustration and disappointment. On your end, make sure:
- Your team is aware of the timeline and its importance.
- Deadlines for approvals and deliverables are met.
While we build in flexibility for unexpected challenges, sticking to the timeline keeps the project moving smoothly.
At Trebletree, we use Click-up to track every task and every part of the website project to make sure we stay on track. Your Trebletree website project manager will help you stay on track and send reminders for upcoming deadlines to help your team stay on track. You may also want to add key dates on a team calendar or set-up recurring internal meetings to review designs and provide feedback.
Step 5: Manage Internal Approvals
Delayed approvals can derail even the best-laid plans. This is the primary reason that website projects get off track. I’ve seen organizations lose weeks waiting for someone to review a page or scrambling to make several rounds of changes to make everyone happy. To keep things on track:
- Decide early on who has final approval authority and make sure everyone understands that while you want to hear all opinions, not everyone’s feedback will ultimately make it into the final design.
- Set up a clear process for gathering and consolidating feedback. If you have more than a handful of reviewers, it’s important to have a process to gather feedback. Sometimes the easiest way is to have a quick meeting with the reviewer so any conflicting feedback can be discussed on the spot. It’s important that your internal team is aligned before you give your feedback to your professional web designer.
- Stick to agreed-upon timelines for providing feedback. Make sure everyone knows the schedule and timelines for approvals. If there are essential team members who have planned trips or vacations, make sure to share that information. Your Trebletree project manager can help work the schedule around your team’s availability.
We’ll provide a roadmap with milestones so you’ll always know where we are in the process. A streamlined approval process helps keep the project moving forward.
Step 6: Prepare Your Content
Content is at the heart of your website, and it takes time to get it right. Whether you’re refreshing existing pages or creating new ones, start early. At Trebletree we offer full content writing services, but you’ll still want to make sure you have time to review and provide feedback on content. If you are planning to develop content yourself, you’ll want to make sure to have content well in advance of the page development. We’ll help you:
- Draft outlines for key pages
- Audit and refine your current content
- Plan new content that speaks directly to your audience.
It’s important to keep an open mind and be flexible with content. Often when we’re designing pages we’ll need to make some adjustments to content to make sure it’s displayed in a user-friendly manner. If you’re building a WordPress website, you’ll have a content management system that makes updating content down the road simple so don’t be afraid to try some new things!
Having a content planner in place ensures everything stays organized and aligned with your goals. Remember, great content doesn’t just inform—it engages and converts.
Step 7: Keep Up the Momentum During the Mid-Project Stretch
The middle part of a website project can feel like a long haul, especially for larger sites. This is where the initial excitement might dip, and tasks can feel more tedious. But it’s also one of the most important phases for making real progress. Here’s how to keep the energy up:
- Revisit your goals and vision to remind yourself of the big picture.
- Celebrate small wins, like completing a section of content or finalizing a design element.
- Stay engaged with regular check-ins and updates from our team.
Remember, this stage is where the groundwork really comes together. By keeping the excitement and focus alive, we can stay on track and move closer to an amazing final product.
Step 8: Understand the Launch Process
The finish line is in sight! Launching a website involves final reviews, QA testing, and a few last-minute tweaks. Here’s how to prepare:
- Plan internal and external communications about the launch. Make sure everyone knows what to expect and how to report bugs.
- Schedule time for testing and feedback. This is a big one. While we’ll do a thorough QA on our side, there are things that your internal team may notice that we wouldn’t. It’s also good to bring in some team members who haven’t been as close to the project for a fresh set of eyes.
- Discuss post-launch support and maintenance. Help your team understand that websites are never done. You have a content management system for a reason. Content can be changed and added over time as your business grows.
We’ll take care of the technical details, but your input ensures everything meets your expectations. Launch day is just the beginning of your site’s journey.
Bonus Step: SEO
While SEO services aren’t required for a new website project, some of our most successful launches include an SEO component during the website planning, website creation, and post-launch. If you don’t already have an SEO strategy, doing keyword research and building out a website content strategy before you build the site can ensure you see positive results in search engines after you launch. It’s important to note that even with an SEO strategy built into your site launch, you will likely see some temporary drops in rankings and organic traffic while search engines index your new site and understand new content. By having a solid strategy for redirects, well-written content, and technical aspects of SEO like schema, site speed, and meta descriptions, you can minimize the drops and rebound quickly. Learn more about our SEO services.
Trebletree: Your Partner in Planning for a Website
At Trebletree, we’re here to make planning a website project as seamless as possible. No two projects are exactly alike and we’ll create a custom timeline based on your specific project goals and your team’s availability.
Here’s what a typical timeline looks like for a medium-sized site with no major feature development:
Recommended Development Time: 15 Weeks
This timeline assumes quick turnarounds on content and approvals. In this sample schedule, we would give the client 2 to 5 days to give us feedback. Adjustments can be made based on your schedule or additional requests. Delays in feedback or approvals will usually extend the timeline and could incur additional project management fees so it’s important to be realistic up front. If you know that you’ll need a week to get everyone that needs to review a page on board, let’s make sure we add that in the schedule.
Discovery & Planning | 3+ Weeks This is where we dive in with your team to finalize the sitemap and scope. We ensure the structure supports your goals and is ready for the next steps. The more organized you are, the quicker this process will be.
Homepage Design & Style Guide | 3+ Weeks We create the look and feel of your site during this phase. This includes building the homepage, optimizing mobile elements, and starting to organize and update content. If you have a brand style guide, this is extremely helpful as we dive into our web design.
Page Build-Out | 7+ Weeks During this time, you’ll start reviewing and approving pages regularly. This phase depends on the size of your site and how much content you need. If you are creating your website content, getting ahead of schedule and having all your content ready to go before we start page build-outs will ensure we can stay on schedule.
QA & Testing | 1+ Week(s): An essential step where both our team and yours get hands-on with the new site to make sure everything works as expected. This can be extended if more time is needed for review. For larger sites, we recommend a longer QA period to allow time to thoroughly review all features and web pages.
Deployment | 1 Week: While the actual launch happens in one day, there are many activities that happen at launch. Pre-launch, we perform final checks and ensure everything is in order with your hosting provider. Post-launch, we’ll make sure site speed is optimized, your site is getting indexed by search engines, and everything displays as expected. After launch, we’ll continue to monitor and work to resolve any bugs that may arise.
Most of our projects, even larger or more complex ones, can be completed within six months. For bigger sites, we can break the project into phases, rolling out critical updates first to ensure your site stays ahead of the curve.
Website projects can feel overwhelming, but we’re here to help. Whether it’s your first website or your fifth, we’ll make sure it’s a success. Ready to get started? Let’s plan your next big project together. Reach out to Trebletree today!
