Planning your Website

Website planning This week Sam and Marcus discuss website planning. An effective website needs planning carefully and Sam shares his knowledge and experience in this area.Goals and Call to actionsIt’s vital that a website has a goal. What is it that you want the visitors to your website to do? Do you want them to call you, buy a product or something different. Once you’ve decided this is essential to get this “Call to action” across in a tempting way. That call to action also needs to be repeated again and again across your website. Landing pagesSam and Marcus chat about the difference between a landing page and a website. A landing page is usually a focussing single page focussed on getting visitors to click on a focussed call to action. But both regular websites and landing page need tempting relevant call to actions.Website structureWhat is the classic way to organise a website is into service offerings. For example for a photographer a wedding page and a pet portraits page. But, Sam suggests organising the website by type of customer is also a good way to organise it. Although for photographers the service type and customer type can be the same. It’s then important to think about the customers journey through the website. It’s good to use the home page to give people little pieces of information and send them to the relevant pages for them.  Keep the menu simple. Ideally five or six items across maximum. When you have blogs be careful about where you send visitors at the end of the blog. Some websites set up a loop where the main pages send visitors to the blog and the blog sends visitors to the main pages. This sends visitors in a loop. You need to ensure that either your main pages or your blogs have a final call to action and not direct visitors elsewhere.Calendar bookingThis can be a great place to direct people to from your website. It’s a way they can book a call easily. If your call to action says “book a call” then directing visitors to a form like this is perfect rather than a generic contact form.  Key messagesMany people writing their own websites write way too much detail. Visitors need to know about the outcomes of your services. They don’t need endless detail about every part of your business. They need to know what it will feel like having worke3d with you and what they will have having worked with you. “You will have an amazing set of photos your business can use for social media for the next year” gives a good clear outcome. The number of images, format, image size and things like that aren’t really needed. ImagesSome websites reply just on images and nothing else. As we discussed this can work for photographers working with agents where the website is just for agents this can work. But this is very few photographers. For most the text is as vital, or more so than the photographs.