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These simple steps will help you prep for the overall plan of your site if you’re starting from scratch or strategically rethinking your current one.
Step 1
In a Google Doc (you can use whatever you like but I love being able to share and access my documents in the cloud), begin to list all the pages you want on your website.
Use pen and paper if you think better with that.
Don’t worry about the order for now, just list out all your pages.
Step 2
Prioritise the pages. Separate them into the “header/main” navigation and “footer” navigation.
Try to keep your header as minimal as possible. Giving users less choice and simple pathways is always better.
The footer is good place for pages like privacy statements but If you have a more complex footer, you might want to separate links into different sub menus.
Bear in mind that there is some convention to menu layouts and where users expect to find certain links. For example “contact” always seems to the last item and “home” the first. You can of course ignore this but the goal is to get page visits that convert so don’t frustrate your users.
Step 3
Flesh out your site plan: create a content outline of what you’d like to focus on for each page. Think about your business goals and what information aligns with those goals.
You also want a primary call to action (CTA) on each page. The CTA should assign to your goal. For example if you are building an email list you want a clear email sign up CTA on the page.
