Website Planning
“Plan your work and work your plan.”
-Napoleon Hill
Site Architecture
Whether you are embarking on a brand-new website, or contemplating a redesign of an existing web property, now is the perfect time to evaluate your overall site architecture. A well-thought-out space offers frictionless navigation for your guests while accommodating future growth, as your website evolves over time.
Planning Service
Our website planning service provides a blueprint of how your final project will look. Much like planning house construction, you’ll need to decide on the placement of walls, doors, and rooms. When planning the framework of a website, it is important to categorize navigation items, develop an internal linking strategy, and decide on menu hierarchy. By addressing these issues early in the web design process, we can organize the entire layout in advance and reduce the chances of needing to “renovate” the site after launch.
Strategy Session
NetGain is pleased to offer a complimentary strategy session with every web design project. We have developed hundreds of websites and have gained valuable insight into the most effective structure and layout. Our process begins with a discussion of your business and marketing objectives. Once we have a thorough understanding of your product and service offerings, we’ll provide advice on the most effective way to arrange your site and provide the best experience for your target audience.
Key Considerations when Planning a Website:
- What is the best way to encourage user engagement?
- How can we reduce your bounce rate?
- What are visitors trying to achieve on your site?
- Will your site need to be designed for scalability?
- What’s the best way to structure content for ranking results?
- How to set up an effective internal linking strategy?
User Experience
We find that the best approach is to place an emphasis on user experience. Whether you are in the planning stages of a home or a homepage, you’ll need to consider how visitors will make their way from room to room (or page to page). The key is making it straightforward for users to find what they are looking for in their moment of need. A well-planned framework will make it intuitive for users to navigate their way. As a result, you’ll be rewarded with increased conversion rates.
Analytics
For an existing website, there’s inherent advantage in leveraging your current Google Analytics data to analyze visitor flow. For example, once people land on your homepage, where do they travel next? What are your most popular pages? What pages do visitors spend the most time on? We can use this information to prioritize page placement within your site. Conversely, if users are ignoring certain pages, then consider consolidating them into a lower-level menu or abandoning them entirely.
Sitemap
Armed with this data, you can expect the architects at NetGain to draft a sitemap for you. A sitemap is a document that shows how your pages and navigation headings are related to one another. Simple websites typically have 4 or 5 categories (Home, About Us, Products/Services, Contact Us). For large sites, we recommend streamlining the navigation bar with no more than 6 headings. Using the sitemap as our compass, we’ll begin the process of building a wireframe of the site. A wireframe provides a visual overview of each page. We insert graphics and content to provide a mockup of how the final product will look. Together we’ll refine the wireframe until we reach a design that you love. Next, our development team takes the reigns and transform it into a functioning website.
Count on NetGain’s website planning service to ensure that your next online project is an overwhelming success. We would be delighted for you to join our enthusiastic fan base! Check our rave reviews, then send us a quick note and let’s schedule a time to get together.