Websites are the main core pillar in your digital marketing. This is because a website is the identity of your brand or business. It shows the brand's authenticity and increases the trust of the users. It is more like your business card in the online world. You showcase your products on your website, and you generate leads from your website. There are many more benefits your business can have from having a website. In the next few articles of this series, let’s get some information about website planning, development, and SEO. Let’s get some information about website planning, key aspects and their importance, some dos and don’ts, website structure, and some other key information.

🔵Website Planning:

Let’s understand website planning before setting up your business website online. Website planning is the process of strategically outlining and organizing the elements and features of a website before its development to ensure that the website meets its goals and serves its target audience.

Website planning is important because:

1. Clear vision and direction: It is the purpose, goals, and objectives of your site, ensuring everyone involved understands the vision and direction.

2. Audience Clarity: Helps to identify, understand the target audience to meet specific needs.

3. Resource Allocation: It will save time and resources by outlining the priority of the work for preventing unnecessary delays.

4. User Experience: To result in higher user satisfaction and longer visit duration, planning focuses on creating a positive user experience.

5. SEO Optimized: A planned website will incorporate best SEO practices from the beginning, improving site visibility.
   

🔵Key Aspects:

1. Clear objectives and goals

2. Target Audience Identification

3. Content Strategy

4. User Experience and Design

5. Information Architecture and Navigation

Let’s know about some dos and don't for effective website planning.

Dos:

🔷Defining Objective: Outline goals and objectives of the website, ,knowing what you want to achieve, whether leads or e-commerce sales.

🔷Audience: Understanding the target audience, their needs, preferences, and behaviors.

🔷Friendliness: Ensuring the website is user-friendly and mobile-friendly.

🔷Content Strategy: Developing a content strategy that includes high-quality, valuable, and relevant content.

🔷SEO Integration: Incorporating SEO best practices from the beginning.

🔷Design: Priority user experience and usability,

🔷Security Measure: Implement security measures to protect user data and the site from cyber threats. Use SSL certificates for security and authenticity, and keeps software updated.

Don’t:

🔷Friendliness: Don’t create a  website that is not friendly for devices because many users access websites using phones and tablets.

🔷Load time: Slowly loading websites frustrates users. Optimize images and minimize unnecessary code to improve leads.

🔷Analytics: Don’t make your website live without implementing analytics tools such as Google Analytics, which will not let you track users behavior and measure their success in life.

🔷SEO: Don’t wait for the website to go live, and then plan for SEO. Plan it from the start to improve the site’s visibility.

🔷Design: Don’t create a website with an overly cluttered design; try to make it simple and effective. 

🔷Security Measures: Don’t neglect the security of your website.

Process of planning a website:

1. Defining Objective: Outline the goals and purpose of the website.

2. Audience Research: Identify and understand your target audience, including demographics, preferences, and pain points.

3. Competitor Analysis: Study your competitors' websites to gain insights into their strategies and identify gaps you can fill.

4. Content Strategy: Plan your content strategy, including the types of content and topics.

5. SEO Planning: Research relevant keywords and phrases for your industry and target audience.

6. Design and Layout: Determine the overall look and feel of your website, aligning it with your brand identity.

7. Functionality & Features: Decide on the essential features and functionalities your website needs.

8. Wireframing and Prototyping: Create wireframes or prototypes to visualize the site's layout and functionality.

9. Development Plan: Choose a content management system (CMS) like WordPress.

10. Launch Strategy: Plan the launch of your website, including setting up hosting and domain configurations.

🔵Website Structure:

Website structure is a must have to work on with 5 major aspects.

1. Conversion Rates: A clear structure can guide visitors towards your desired actions

2. User Experience: A well-structured site makes navigation intuitive, ensuring a positive user experience.

3. Scalability: A good structure allows easy expansion as your website grows.

4. SEO Optimization:  Search engines use site structure to understand and rank your content.

5. Content Organisation: It helps to categorize and present content logically.

There are 4 types of website structure which helps achieving the 5 aspects we mentioned above. 

1. Hierarchical Website Structure

2. Linear Web Structure

3. Webbed Website Structure (A.K.A Network Model)

4. Database Website Structure
   

Let’s get some usage about all of them. We don’t need to be a professional web designer or developer or focus completely on this tech part. But according to the business goals and needs we must have an idea before launching and marketing our product.

🔷 Usage of Hierarchical Website Structure

Corporate Websites: Organizations often use hierarchical structures to present information about their products, services, and corporate details.

E-commerce Sites: Product categories and subcategories are organized hierarchically for a clear shopping experience.

🔷 Usage of Linear Website Structure

Tutorials and Courses: Linear structures are ideal for online courses and tutorial websites where content should be consumed sequentially.

Storytelling Websites: Platforms telling a narrative or a story often use linear structures.

🔷 Usage of Webbed Website Structure (AKA Network Model)

Blogs: Many blogs use webbed structures as they allow readers to explore topics freely.

News Websites: News articles often link to related articles, providing webbed navigation.

🔷 Usage of Database Website Structure

E-commerce Marketplaces: Marketplaces like Amazon use database-driven structures to present personalized product recommendations.

Social Media Platforms: Social networks rely on databases to deliver customized feeds and user-specific content.

🔵 Navigation Planning

When setting up the website structure its also important to setup the navigation with a proper planning. An intuitive navigation planning is crucial as it directly impacts users satisfaction. With effective navigation planning and implementations, users can find what they need quickly and without frustration. It also reduces bounce rates and increases user engagement.

Let’s now talk about Data Flow Diagram in navigation:

To improve the navigation of the website structure and plan the navigation accordingly we must create a proper DFD (Data Flow Diagram) of the while creating a proper website structure.
Data Flow Diagrams (DFD) provide a visual representation of how data moves and is processed within a system. In the context of website planning, DFDs can be valuable for understanding the flow of data between different components of a website.

There are 4 main components of DFD

1. Processes: Represent various functions or activities that manipulate data.

2. Data Stores: Depict where data is stored within the system.

3. Data Flows: Show the movement of data between processes and data stores.

4. External Entities: Indicate sources or destinations of data outside the system.

DFDs in website planning is necessary for understanding the processes, visualizing data movements, and identify inputs and outputs. This is kinda pre-planning or pre-visual of your website.

Let’s now talk about Siteflow Map in navigation:

Site flow maps are graphical representations of the different pathways users take when interacting with a website. They illustrate the sequence of pages or steps users visit during their online journey. Siteflow maps are important in 

🔷Visualizing User Journeys by offering a visual snapshot of how users move through your website. 

🔷Optimizing User Experience By understanding user paths, user experience can be enhanced by streamlining navigation and content.

🔷Identifying Pain Points as it can reveal bottlenecks or areas where users drop off, helping you pinpoint issues and improve them.

There are 4 simple steps to create siteflow maps for the website.

Step 1: Identify Key Pages

Begin by identifying the most important pages and entry points on your website.

Step 2: User Segmentation

Consider different user segments and their unique journeys.

Step 3: Connectin User Action

Map the connections between pages or actions users can take.

Step 4: Use of Arrows and Lines

Arrows or lines between elements indicate the flow or sequence of user interactions.

With the siteflow map we can get smart benefits in website before even starting the website designs:

• Enhanced User Engagement: By understanding user journeys, you can create a more engaging and personalized experience.

• Conversion Optimization: Identify where users drop off or abandon processes and make improvements to increase conversions. 

• Content Strategy: Tailor your content strategy to match common user pathways.

• UX Design Improvements: Optimize your website's design and navigation based on real user interactions.

The most important benefit is even after the complete website is structured and design you can understand and update the structure according to the feedbacks.

In future posts we will be learning and diving deeper into the process to creating the siteflow maps and DFDs.

Few tools that can be used to creating siteflow maps are:

LucisChart, Miro, Draw.io, Glify

With this we will be continuing with development of website to start your small online platform and grow your online presence in the next post of this series.

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