Getting your website plan is a lot like establishing a business plan with the following categories: Name: You've put a lot of effort into naming your business.
You should put the same thought into the domain name for your website.
Hopefully, you'll be able to work your business name and/or services into the domain name.
Also, learn from this website owner (me), and try to make it easy to understand over the phone (Specialists...
no with an "S", no not "F", "S" as in Sam, plural, ugh).
Vision: Where do you see your business in the future? How about your website? One year? Three? Of course these will change because of how quickly the Internet changes, but remember your website isn't a tattoo.
Make sure your website is fully upgradable and scalable so when you want to add things, you don't need to start from square one.
Mission Statement: If you were in an elevator and had 45 seconds to describe what your business is, what would you say? What's the Mission Statement for your website? What will you offer your visitors? How will it be better than your competitors? Goals: What are your goals for the website? Who do you want visiting? Clients, potential employees, wholesalers? Do you have a number for the amount of people you want coming to the website? How many referrals do you want from it? Strategic Plan: Why would someone go to your website? Ahh.
I love this question and I've received many a stare from it.
Now that you have clearly defined website goals (the last step), what are you doing to achieve them? How will your target audience find you? You can do a lot of the work yourself with Social Media, or you can hire a reputable Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization company to get you visitors.
Financial Plan: I meet with potential clients that have spent about $5,000 a month on a certain phone book yet can't believe there's a monthly cost associated with their website which
- Has fully trackable results (website analytics) which help form your future plan
- Can act as a business resource center
- Can have a Blog which can act as your company newspaper / resource area
- Can have a calendar of upcoming events
Fine tuning your strategic website plan based off of your website analytics: Who's visiting your website, where people are going on your website, how long they're staying, and where they're leaving.