Website Planning Guide

This tool has been produced by the National Business to Business Centre to guide you through the website planning process. This tool should be used in conjunction with the Website Planning Workbook (downloadable from the e-marketing toolbox, in the NB2BC website) where you should record the actions as you complete them.

The aim of this tool is to help you plan your website, but also to encourage you to think about a website as something more than just a platform for promotion and selling, and more about how your website can build relationships with your customers
and improve your service delivery.

Before we start………….a generic website map!

So what does a website look like? Below is a graphical representation of the most common pages needed on a website and the route to be followed to get to them. It may help your initial thinking.

This is a generic website map; it draws on all the NB2BC’s experience and shows most of the functions or pages most SMEs are likely to require on their website. A description of each page exists in the appendix.

Your company will probably only require some of the pages and you may wish to call them different names. This tool will guide you through the website planning process so that you can create a website map that is tailored to your specific needs.

1. Business Goals
When planning any website, it is vital to consider what you are looking to achieve as a business in the next 24 months. If you are clear in your own mind what you want to achieve as a business, then you can begin to consider how a website will help you
achieve this.

Like many businesses you may not have clearly defined goals, but it is likely that you will have several ideas of where you want the business to go over the next couple of years (your local Business Link can help you develop a more detailed business plan for your business, visit www.businesslink.gov.uk for more information).

To draw out your business goals consider the following questions (and any others appropriate to your business) and how important each is to your business:

• Do you want to grow your business? If so, by how much?
• Do you want to reduce costs? If so, where, and by how much?
• Do you want to improve efficiency?
• Do you want to improve customer service?
• Do you want to launch a new product?

2. Objectives for your Website
If you are to measure the success of your website it is vital to develop a set of website objectives. A website should support your overall business goals, so consider how your website will help you achieve your business goals stated above. Consider the following questions (and any others appropriate to your business):

• Do you want to sell more to existing customers? If so, how much more? How much of this will be through your website?
• Do you want to acquire new customers? If so, how many?
• Do you want to target new markets? If so, what are these markets?
• Do you want to sell online? If so, how much revenue do you want to generate?
• Do you want to reduce your marketing costs? If so, where, and by how much?

Download Website Planning Guide

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