Are you ready for your website project? Are you sure? Below are 12 steps to take before you dive headfirst into creating a new website.

When clients come to me, they’re often surprised about how much prep work is required on their part before we can get started.

If you take the time upfront to get all your ducks in a row, the entire web design process will be easier (even fun!) and you won’t get overwhelmed by all the moving parts of the process.

Maybe you’ve read my post on the 5 things you need to have ready before hiring a web designer.

This is a more in-depth, thorough guide of everything you need to think about and do before you decide to hire a web designer or DIY your own website.

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1. Do you really have time for this right now?

Without fail, my clients are always surprised by just how much work it is to create a website. Even if you hire a web designer, there is still a lot of work for you, the client. This post goes into detail on a lot of these tasks.

Beyond tasks, though, there is a lot of thinking work involved.

You need to make yourself available to your web designer for calls, questions and working sessions. A web designer is an expert at creating websites, but not on your particular business.

A web designer won’t understand your ideal customer, and her pain points, as well as you do. Your designer will need not just your content inputs to design a strategic website for you but also all of the knowledge about your business that’s locked up in your brain.

Here’s my rule of thumb: Estimate the time you think is necessary for your web project. Then quadruple it.

2. Why do you need this website? Define your objective.

Okay, you need a website. Why? Because you have to have a website. Yes, but why do you need a website? What is your goal for this website, beyond making your business/work legit? Launching a website is not an exercise in vanity.

We all have businesses for one primary reason: Our livelihood, to earn money. There are real, strategic ways a website can help you do this. Defining your objective is really answering the question “How is my website going to contribute to my business goals?”

How will it help you get clients or customers? How can a website automatically set limits around the free intro consultations that are eating into all of your time and profits? How will it get people to sign up for your newsletter? Is it easy for your website visitors to sign up to one of your yoga classes or get on the wait list for your course? Can a website help you book more of the 1:1 consulting sessions you’re offering?

In other words, what does this website need to do? What frustrations do you have in your business?

It’s possible, even likely, that your website can not only help increase your business, but it can also help it run more smoothly.

Examples - Website Objectives:

Grow my mailing list
Sell more of my online courses
Build a pipeline of interested, engaged leads
Get me more media bookings
Highlight my work in a professional and visually appealing way
Book more private consulting sessions
Screen out time-wasters that want to pick my brain for free

3. What’s your online game plan? Figure out your digital strategy.

“What do you mean, my digital strategy?” I can hear you asking.

When I talk about digital strategy, what I mean is this: What’s your plan for putting together all of the tools you’ll need in your online toolkit.

Your website is the heart of the online ecosystem you’ve built or plan to build. You don’t have to have it all figured out, but you need to have an idea how all of the parts of your online (and offline) world will work together to support your business objectives.

How are you going to get people to find your site? Word of mouth? SEO (search engine optimization)? Should clients find you through Instagram? Should you blog? Do you have an email list? Should you start one? If you’re building a web shop, do you also need a POS (point of sales) system? Do you need Shopify? Or is a marketplace like Etsy or Amazon better? Do you even need a web shop? Maybe a Squarespace site with it’s commerce package* to sell a handful of products is better.

You will you need tools, apps and services to do these things. It may be as simple as having a website and email. Your strategy may require a recipe of 5 different services strung together in a way that is easy and intuitive to use.

This can be a tricky process because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Here’s some more guidance on the topic of digital strategy. Or, you can book a session with me to help figure yours out. Getting this right at the beginning will save you a lot of frustration, confusion and money.

4. What does your website need to do? Define your requirements.

Requirements is just jargon for all of the things your website is going to need to do functionally.

Twice, twice! I have started projects with clients and they’ve innocently mentioned that “Oh yeah, the website needs to be in two languages” (this is a BFD!).

Not catching this early was definitely my fault. I now add this to my list of questions on a client intake call. In Europe this should be standard operating procedure.

A website needing to be in multiple languages is a good example of a website requirement. Here are some more:

I need to sell something (or a lot of things)
My customers have to reserve a spot in advance for my yoga classes
My customers need to see a schedule of all of our workshops and purchase a spot
My clients need to book a consultation using credit cards, bank transfer or PayPal
My accounting software needs to work with my website
I want to know how my clients found my website
I want visitors to my website to be able to easily get on an email list
I have a unique Instagram hashtag, I want a feed of posts with only this hashtag to show up on the home page
My brick and mortar store POS (point of sale) system needs to work with my new online shop

Requirements go beyond the content of your web page (home page, services, about, etc.).

Requirements are the special functionalities your website must have to support business tasks, make your website more user friendly or increase your bottom line by upping sales and conversions.

If you don’t have a ton of requirements, great. It’s still helpful to understand any you do have. Understanding your requirements allows you to communicate them to your website designer before the project starts (which will help her estimate cost) or research how you can meet them on your own.

5. How much stuff do you need? Define your scope.

Once you’ve got your objectives, strategy and requirements figured out, you need to define your scope. Scope, simply put is “how much.”

How much of the website project are you going to tackle? If you came up with a list of 26 requirements are you going to tackle them all at once? Or can you start with a subset and finish the rest in a follow on project (probably a good idea).

For example, if you know you need a new online shop in two languages (a LOT of work) it’s probably best to launch in one language first and launch in the second later.

If you’re not sure when your workshops are going to take place, you can launch a site inviting your visitors to get on a mailing list, so you can let them know when they can sign up, and you can add the workshop booking functionality to your site later.

Maybe you launch some information pages and a blog to generate interest in your products before for you launch your online store.

There’s a term in the start-up world: “Minimal Viable Product” or MVP. MVP means the least amount of features required to bring a software product to the market. It’s a smart idea to think about a MVP for your website launch before you get started.

6. When does your site need to go live? Decide on a launch date.

Get an idea of when you would like - or have to - get your website live.

This might impact your scope. You may realize you can’t launch a website with #allthethings in two weeks.

There is a dance of give and take between how much (scope) and how long (time) - not to mention your budget. Figuring out your launch date may have an impact on both your requirements and scope.

7. Which platform will you use?

Get a feel for the different platforms and services out there.

The obvious ones for a website are Squarespace*, Wordpress, Wix and the like. For ecommerce sites, platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce (for Wordpress sites) are popular. Same thing for Email services; some love Mailchimp or Mailer Lite or Convertkit. Maybe you’re a content creator and Kajabi is the thing for you.

You’ll also need to decide if you want a hosted or non-hosted platform. I recommend a hosted platform to most of my clients.

If you’re doing this yourself, how easy is the service or platform to use?

Read through the product feature lists, do they meet your requirements? Many offer free trials, take as many as possible for a test drive. Tap your network or Facebook groups for fellow business owners’ experiences with different platforms or services.

8. Do some keyword research.

Keywords are the words that describe what your business is and what it offers.

Brainstorm terms users would enter into a search engine to find your website. You don’t have to sign up for an expensive SEO keyword subscription service.

Start with a list and enter search terms and phrases into Google. A tool like Keywords Everywhere can help you get even more ideas.

Why do you need a list of keywords and phrases?

Your website text should be peppered with these to help your SEO (search engine optimization). In other words, you want to make sure you show up in Google when people type in the service or product you have to offer.

If you’re creating a website, you’ll also need to have short SEO page titles and descriptions for each page. Your unique keywords will need to be in these descriptions. Here’s a basic introduction to SEO.

9. Define your brand. How do you want your customers to feel about you and your business?

Your brand, simply put, is a person’s gut feeling about you and what you have to offer. The three components below help communicate your brand. Give them some thought. Write your thoughts down and put together a document you can use as a reference in the design process.

Attributes - What qualities and feelings do you want customers to associate with your business. Attributes are adjectives like “calm” “competent” “modern” “stylish.”
Visual identity - Is there a color palette that matches your brand attributes? What about imagery? Typography? Gather images, colors and fonts that feel good to you and match your brand attributes.
Voice & Tone - “Voice and Tone” is a term copywriters use to describe the style of a particular piece of writing. Think about the text you want on your website (and all of your marketing materials for that matter). Should your copy be formal and polite? Conversational? Chatty and intimate? No nonsense and to the point? What kind of wording would grab the attention of your ideal customer and fits your overall brand?

10. Write your website copy (or hire a copywriter).

Now that you’ve got keywords and your voice and tone guidelines, it’s time to write your website copy.

Copywriting. Is. HARD. I just can’t stress this enough.

I’ve been lucky to have incredibly smart clients, and they always get stuck when it comes to writing text for their website.

The task seems so big that they don’t know where to start. It’s easy to feel like you’re just bragging.

Crafting your text in a way that communicates all the information you want to give your audience, in a voice that feels authentic and is concise is an art.

A few guidelines for writing your copy:

Place your customer (not yourself) at the center of your text.
What problem are you helping them solve? How can you specifically help them solve it?
What will their life look and feel like after they’ve worked with you or purchased one of your products or services?
Communicate your credibility by mentioning your credentials, anecdotes and testimonials, but only after you’ve done the first three things listed above.

11. Pick out some images.

Ideally you’ve hired a photographer to take some professional headshots or a branded shoot. If not, there are workarounds.

Stock photography is plentiful and cheap, even free. Keep in mind that images you use from these sources will be on other websites, social media accounts, etc. But as a starting point, it’s perfectly fine to use stock images.

Here are some stock image resources I like:

https://stocksy.com (slightly less generic than typical stock photography)
https://shutterstock.com (affordable, large, well categorized selection)
https://pexels.com (free)
https://unsplash.com (free)
https://kaboompics.com (free)

When looking for images keep your brand attributes in mind.

What images communicate how you want your customer to feel about your business? Remember those adjectives!

Think about your color palette and find images that match it. If you hire a web designer she can also alter the coloring, or apply a visual style to all of your images so that they look similar.

You must include a nice, professional looking photo of yourself.

Nothing replaces the professional look of an image taken by a photographer, but if that’s out of your budget you can find some guidelines on taking a professional self-portrait here, here and here.

12. Create a site outline. What pages do you need?

What pages does your website need to have?

The most basic ones are:

A home page - An introduction screen that provides the visitor an overview of who you are, what you do and how you can help them. Each section of this page will take the user deeper into your website
A services/offerings/work with me page - A detailed guide of what you offer and how the visitor can purchase, sign up, book a session, etc.
An about page - Counterintuitively, this page is where you talk some more about your ideal customer’s problems and how you can solve them. You should definitely include text that emphasizes your credibility and credentials and any relevant biographical information, but keep it short and put it towards the end.
A contact page - A place where people can contact you either via a form or your contact information
Legal pages - Privacy policy, terms, etc.

If you think you need sub-pages, just create your list in classic outline form, with bullets and sub-bullets.

If you hire a web designer, she may have changes and suggestions, but a simple outline gives you a starting point.

Congratulations! You’re ready to begin your website project! Wasn’t that easy?

I know it’s a lot, but going through these steps eliminates a ton of confusion before you start your project.

The best time to get rid of confusion is before you start your project. You haven’t invested any money yet and you’re not on the clock hurtling towards a deadline.

If you run into any stumbling blocks you can create a list of questions before you hire a web designer and she can help you with them.

This will help her understand where you might need extra guidance.

Believe it or not, taking care of these steps will also make the process of getting your website up and running pleasurable and exciting rather than a source of stress, overload and frustration.

Most importantly, doing this upfront work will ensure you have a kick-ass website that immediately tells your ideal customers that they’ve come to the right place!

Want even more help? Download my free guide: 3 Mistakes to Avoid When Getting Online

Or book a free 15-minute consultation talk with me!

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*affilliate links - the rent is too damn high!