There may be a thousand ways to plan a website, each slightly or completely different from the last. Everyone's approach is different, but I want to offer a single method that really gets to the heart of the matter.
What's Planning Really About?
The planning stage, the first part, is where we discuss everything from Design to Development, Testing and Delivery, but there are two things to keep in mind:
- Figuring out the business goals
- Prioritizing top features and/or designs
Finding what the business goals are leads us to know what the most important features are because they tie back to the business goals. Every decision made for Design, Development or any other phase must satisfy some portion of the business goals, otherwise it is an unnecessary piece of the puzzle.
1. Understanding the Business Goals:
The business goals are the reasons the site exists, so every decision for design and development needs to tie back to one of the business goals. When all decisions tie back successfully to the business goals, the website is more efficient and effective.
Here is a question to help figure out what the business goals are, both now and for the future:
- Where does the website need to be in 1 year, 2 years, and 5 years?
Based on those answers, you can start outlining how to get there.
2. Prioritizing the Important Features/Designs:
While you may know what your goals are for the site, it is also a good idea to set priorities. If a key feature must be included in this round of development, that decision should be made at the beginning so it gets prioritized ahead of other ideas.
To figure out what features are most important, tie each feature back to a business goal. If it can't be connected with a business goal, then either save it for later until it can be retooled or discard it.
To quote our designer quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupery:
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery
When you come to the next round of development or design, remember that the most important features might be the only features you really need. Feel free to check out this podcast that discusses much the same theme of prioritization for custom software.
Photo by Alvin Smith
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