Strategic Website Planning

When it comes to strategically planning your new website, it is important to consider a couple of crucial factors before you get started. Each of those points will point you in the right direction in terms of how you should structure your website, choose your content as well as your colours and fonts. 

Dive deep into your business goals 

What is it that you want to be able to look back on in say three, six and nine months? Focusing on specific and time-sensitive goals allows you to break down and prioritize your action points. It also gives you a clear direction. Important to consider: be as specific as possible on each goal, ie define measurable sub-goals or action points to reach the primary goal. Numbers are way easier to monitor and facilitate regular goal evaluations. Also, try to think a goal all the way through. Is adding a specific feature to your product only following a trend, or will this also result in considerable value increase of your product or service for both, your business as well as the customer?

What is your USP (Unique Selling Point) 

Obviously you know best what it is you’re selling. But before you start out designing your new online presence it can really make a difference to define exactly what it is you want the user to learn about your abilities at a first glance. You are the expert when it comes to the value you will give to your clients. So you have to make sure everyone understands those wins from the very beginning of navigating through your site. Worth mentioning: while you’re in the process start out by rather being a little too aware of what it is you can’t do or know your competitors might be doing better. Looking at it this way might automatically point you to a strength of yours that you haven’t even considered yet.

For example: as a young startup with limited manpower and resources, you might not offer a super automated process for customers throughout their onboarding. However, this also means that you are involved in every step of the way. Meaning, your clients can rely on a personal onboarding and high-quality support along the way, which also reduces potential errors. This is a huge win for clients, especially if they know the pain of not having a personal touch point along their usual client journey. Make use of it! 

Identify your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

Not every company that offers a comparable product or service is a competitor of yours. Who you are up against considerably depends on which audience it is that you are targeting. And the choice of your target audience is based again on what it is that you can offer - hence your USPs. The last thing you want to do is attract a specific audience and then not be able to fulfill their needs. 

Once you have an idea of your target audience, this is where the fun begins. The best thing you can do is to create a persona. This obviously includes demographics such as: are you addressing females or males, in which part of the world do they live, how old are they and what is it they do professionally? But the deeper you go, the more specific you know what you should or shouldn’t bring up on your website and which wording is going to be most effective. 

Meaning, you want to describe your ideal customer as if that person was sitting in front of you and you had a conversation with them. What other brands do they love, which ones do they avoid? What are their values and do they have strong feelings about socio-political developments? Here’s an example: Katie feels strongly about veganism and equality. She is willing to pay more for a product if it is fairly produced or a service that comes from a very modern and forward-thinking company. Hence, she also pays attention to the values highlighted on the company’s website and social media channels.