Having a website plan for your business is the most important way to guarantee your success. So when should you start the planning process? The answer is at the very beginning. That seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? At the beginning means: Before designers Before developers Before search engine optimizers Before any social or paid marketing […]

The website planning process outlined in my book can appear that it’s an all or nothing approach to planning.  I indeed think the owners of the web property need to be heavily invested in the planning process and take the lead on a large portion of it.  That view comes from many years of watching […]

In The Complete Website Planning Guide I outline what a wireframe is and the confusion that many people get, particularly on the client side, with wireframes. A wireframe isn’t a prototype or a design; typically it doesn’t use colour or images, and mostly will only use some actual content. When you see a drawing/image, which […]

This week I read a blog from Seth Godin called The minimum viable audience which resonated with me and the goals and audience section inside my Planning Guide. He talks about focussing in on the smallest group that could sustain you in your work.  And if you could pick them who would you choose. If […]

Ideally creating a scope of works for a web project would be done before entering into a design and development contract for the work. For many clients they want a simplified process, choosing a developer and moving forward in the project. Agencies and developers often are happy to get work in this way and take […]

It’s a question that comes up a lot. What comes first, the content or the design. Getting this right has a big impact on the success of your project and the planning stage of your website is the best time to address it. I discuss what I think is the correct way to handle this […]

Why do some people like to plan everything while others prefer flying by the seat of their pants? In some industries or circumstances having a plan is critical while in others not necessary at all. Building a house from scratch with out plans is pretty clearly fraught with danger and in most countries not allowed. […]

If you want to avoid the common mistakes that are made when building a new website then the only way to do that is to create a plan before you do anything else. Successful businesses all have plans on key parts of their operations.  A business plan, marketing plan, operation plans etc. are all expected […]