Website Business Plan

What Is a P.L.A.N.
To help you understand what your website will need, use the P.L.A.N. acronym. You will surely fail early on without one. I have done several websites that clients decided to wing it, and within 1 year they decide to drop their dream.

Prepare – You need to identify your target audience, appropriate website tone, and goals.

Landscape – Using the whiteboard technique you should think through how you would like your website to be able to function. More specifically, what features need to be on your site? IE: Template and Extensions

Aesthetics – Having a great looking website is a important as what you put in it.  Think about what colors and images you want on your site and how your site compares to your competitors. NOTE: make sure you are not copy righting other images. This could put you in a illegal position you don’t want to be in.

Navigation – It is important to plan how you want your audience directed through your website with the proper navigation. Make sure you plan through what pages you need and how they should be laid out, you will help ensure, early on, the good visitor experience. You want your customers/visitors to stay engaged when they visit your website.

Where to start with your P.L.A.N. (The Website)
PREPARING: Don’t just buy your done before working with your business plan. Chances are you will not like the one you purchased and it’s a waste of money.

You need to determine who is your target market. Think about who are the most likely buyers of what you're selling, and what is the best way to speak to them. Your goal includes what do you want the website to do for you and if you want to generate leads, sell products, or perhaps operate as an online brochure.

By using the whiteboard techniques, you can pull together the information you need on the site to achieve your goal. You need to make sure you organize your information based on your target market, and how you think is the best way to provide this information to your customers.

LANDSCAPE: When figuring out the "correct template" for your website is determining which website features are essential and desirable to meet the goals for your website. To do that, you need to refer to your plan goals for your website in the previous step. For instance, if you want to sell products, you are going to need credit card processing and a shopping cart feature.

Features to consider include:

Using a lead magnet to build an email list
Ecommerce set up including shopping cart and payment processing
Photo or video gallery
Blog
Map and directions if you see clients
Contact page or information including your hours of operation
Social media links and share buttons
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Portfolio
Testimonial page
Not only do you want to consider front-end features, but also, you'll want to consider back-end features such as:

Integrated marketing systems such as search engine optimization (SEO) Security measures, such as an SSL certificate to help your visitors feel safe Caching to help your web pages load faster
You don't necessarily need all the features listed above. However, you need to consider your marketing and your goals for the site in determining what is needed.

AESTHETICS: Design aesthetics, or the way your site looks, is a crucial piece of the website creation process. Most web hosts providers offer templates and (CMS) content management system platforms have themes to make this part easy.

How do you decide the look of your site:

Look who you are determined to be your market and think about their demographics. It's important to match your site's tone to your market. Don’t get crazy with colors for you website unless it is the market you are in. Make your site easy to read. Generally, white font on a black background is harder to read than black on white. Also, consider the font style. Stick with basic fonts that all browsers will be able to deliver to the reader.

Use images, because as the old adage goes, a picture says a thousand words. Research indicates that readers are attracted to visual content. But you need to choose quality graphics that enhance your content and message and not go overboard with too many images. You can take your own photos or there are​ free and low-cost stock photo options available on the Internet.

You want the best information to grab your visitor’s attention so this should be on your homepage. (landing page) Avoid making your visitors must scroll down to get the information they want. NOTE: depending on your site this may be necessary. IE: A website using Scriptures could be long, so you may want to have a search bar to help the location information on your website.

Employ a responsive design. Responsive design allows web pages to be translated into a format that is viewable on mobile devices such as connected smartphones and pads.

Important
You don't want to copy or plagiarize. You simply want to get a sense of the colors, fonts, and themes that are used to create an atmosphere for visitors.

NAVIGATION: Website navigation is the way the website pages and links are organized. Deciding your navigation structure before you build is crucial to designing a site that is easy for your visitors to use and to find what they want. To determine your site's navigation most will have something like this.

Home | About us | Resources | Contact us | Login and so-on.

Putting It All Together
Once you've completed your P.L.A.N / Goals, you're ready to move on to the building phase. That starts with buying a domain name and web hosting, and then choose the webiste theme that will fit your tone and provide all the features you want to include.

Once you've built your website, be sure to check that all pages and graphics load correctly. Make sure you test your forms to ensure they're working. Make sure you check your site on different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari), as well as on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) to make sure all elements appear and work.