How to start creating a website for your business: pre-production workbook

In my process, I divide website development into four stages:

• Pre-production: researching the business, setting up the structure, and writing content.
• Production Part 1: design
• Production Part 2: development.
• Post-production: support, analytics tracking, and KPIs review.

Are you're on the pre-production stage? Let’s start it.

What forms a good pre-production process?

You'll be working on two levels to establish a perfect base for creating a website for your business.

Level 1 is for your internal work. Do it with your marketing team and all the main stakeholders. Most likely, you already have this information. You just need to structure it.

On level 2 you will start including your website designer to make the best decisions.

Important! Involve all the stakeholders in the process so everyone is on the same page.

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L1 Step 1. Company profile

Purpose: give a clear image of your business to your website designer. This deep dive will allow you to look inside and represent your uniqueness and value in a language that fits your company.

What’s included: target audience, mission statement, your products or services description, value proposition, and competitors.

How to describe your target audience:

1. Who are your customers? Create a short profile mentioning the critical characteristics.
2. What problems are they trying to solve? What are their biggest frustrations?
3. What are their buying behaviors? How do they find your product/service (and your competitors’)?

You can have 2-3 target audiences, but it’s better to emphasize the most important one.

How to write a mission statement:

A mission statement is a short and sweet way to explain what a company is all about. It's a way for the company to say, "Hey, this is who we are and what we stand for!” Your mission statement should be clear, concise, and memorable.

1. Identify your company's purpose: What does your company do? What problem does it solve for its customers? Why does it exist?
2. Define your company's values: What principles guide your company's decisions and actions? What’s important to your company and its stakeholders?
3. Consider your target audience: What do they care about? How does your company serve them?
4. Use this information to write a clear, concise statement that communicates your company's purpose and values.

What to write about your products/services:

1. Name your products/services.
2. Identify the key benefits or features. What problems does the product/service solve for the customer?
3. Describe use cases.
4. Describe your customer journey showing how the service works.

How to draw up a value proposition:

1. Highlight the advantages of your product/service. Showcase how it addresses the pain points or improves the lives of your target audience.
2. Pinpoint the factors that make your product/service exceptional. Identify what sets you apart: a distinct feature, a unique selling point, or an innovative problem-solving approach.
3. Now you can communicate your value to your target audience. Your value proposition statement should be easy to understand and memorable.

Your competitors

You don't need to give your website designer a complete competitive analysis report. Provide them with some basic information:

1. List the names and the URLs
2. What are their key selling points?
3. Identify the specific target audience that your competitors are targeting.
4. How do they position themselves with branding and marketing strategies?

L1 Step 2. Business website audience

Purpose: by knowing your audience, your website designer can customize the user experience to cater to their needs, ensuring a seamless and personalized journey.

What’s included: three main questions: who, why, and how.

Sometimes the target audience of your products/services differs from the target audience of your website. When creating a website for your business you can focus on investors or only on one target audience group. But things can also be simple, and your website's audience is business' general audience. In any way, you need to establish its characteristics.

1. Who? Describe who is the core target audience of your website.
2. Why? Include the reasons why they’re coming to your website. What are they looking for? What are their needs and objections?
3. How? Do they use their phone or laptop? From where do they get to your website? What are the circumstances and surroundings?

L1 Step 3. Business website goals

Purpose: setting clear goals will help focus your website designer's efforts and give you the source for identifying KPIs.

What’s included: purpose, target actions, KPIs.

Website goals come from your business goals and support them. Setting these goals can create a cohesive strategy that helps you achieve both.

General options for business website purpose

1. Lead generation
2. Direct sales
3. Brand awareness
4. Customer education and support
5. Community building

You can specify the purpose as detailed as you want. Remember that you can customize purpose to your overall business goals.

More business website purposes options: event promotion, recruitment, education and training, donations or fundraising, metrics tracking, etc.

How to determine the target actions

You've got your audience and purposes locked down; you can derive the target actions from here. Picture the user journey on your website and identify which actions they should make for you to achieve your goals. Here are some standard examples to get you started:

1. Lead generation: fill out a contact form; sign up for a newsletter; a free resource, in exchange for their contact information.
2. Sales: make a direct purchase; contact a sales representative to request more information about a product or service.
3. Brand awareness: spend as much time as possible browsing and consuming content on the website; share content on social media; follow the brand on social media; subscribe to the newsletter.
4. Customer support: submit a support ticket; contact a support representative through a chatbot or contact form.
5. Community building: create an account to participate in a forum or discussion board; share their own content or expertise.

Setting KPIs

After creating a website for your business remember to track your KPIs and adjust your website and marketing strategies to improve performance. Regularly review KPIs to ensure ongoing alignment with your overall business objectives.

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L1 Step 4. References

Purpose: knowing what is close to your brand visually can be a direction for a designer.

What’s included: website’s URLs and comments to them.

The good idea is to have 2-3 examples of the business websites you like. For each example, specify exactly which parts of the website you're showing are appealing to you. Things to pay attention to:

• Illustrations style
• Photos style
• Animations and interactions
• Background images
• Colors
• Fonts
• Different sections and pages (for example, UVPs presentation, Testimonials presentation, Blog presentation, etc.)
• Navigation
• Footer

Additional inbox information

At the end of level 1, let's gather important administrative information.

1. What is your deadline? Have realistic expectations, please. Additionally, give your website designer an understanding of what depends on the website's launch.
2. Future support of your business website is important information for a designer because they need to understand how you will interact with it after it's launched.
3. Marketing collateral. After creating a website for your business you can design marketing materials to support the website launch or for further promotion and acquisition of clients. Let the designer know about it so they can plan how to incorporate the design language they use into those materials.

L2 Step 1. Branding

Purpose: your branding is your portrait, and building a website based on it leads to the most accurate visual representation.

What’s included: go as deep as your budget allows – logo, brand colors, brand fonts, examples of brand assets and marketing materials, imagery, and messaging voice.

If you still need to cover that part, go through it with the website designer. You don't necessarily have to dive deep into the branding process, but at least establish the basics.

Basics: the logo

A logo is a reflection of your company's essence and image. If you don't have one, this is an excellent opportunity to produce it. Working together with a designer, you'll get a logo and move forward with your brand identity.

Heart and soul: brand identity

With the logo up in your sleeve, you can move on to further crafting your brand. You need to think of both technical and creative aspects:

• How, where, and in which sizes will your logo be used (website, different social media, presentations, big and small print materials, different backgrounds and environments)?
• Which colors and fonts will accompany your logo and present your brand the best?
• Which style of icons and additional graphic elements you want to use to support your brand?

Extra nuggets: visual and messaging style

If you're willing to go the extra mile, prepare a set of images (photos and illustrations) for a style reference.

In addition, set a messaging tone you want to have cause it will also help your website designer feel how you intend to approach your audience.

Tip: go through Pinterest and photo stock websites (e.g., Shutterstock) with keywords and save the images that speak to you.

L2 Step 2. Tech

Purpose: with this information, your website designer will better understand the project's scope and the constraints within which they will create the design.

What’s included: domain, hosting, development preferences, analytics, and integrations.

Domain

A few words on a domain, in case you don't have one yet.

• If it fits naturally, add the main keyword in your domain for an SEO boost.
• Get creative with different extensions like .io or .tech for a unique touch.
• Try to avoid hyphens and numbers if you can.
• If you're going global, explore country-specific extensions or translations.
• Consider the future and choose a domain that can grow with your business.
• Bonus: protect your brand by securing variations of your domain.

Hosting

Hosting is where you will store your business website. If you build it with actual custom code, you will take care of the domain yourself. If you use no-code solutions, they have the hosting covered. I use Webflow for building business websites I design for my clients, and they have affordable hosting solutions.

Development preferences

There are some options regarding how you will build your website:

• Custom complex code your developer will write – for projects with complex backends.
• No-code professional platforms (Webflow, Framer) – for unique company/product websites.
• No-code templates solutions (Wix, WordPress, Squarespace) – for standard company/product websites.

Analytics and other integrations

The required minimum is:

• Google Analytics;
• Email automation platform (Mailchimp, Convertkit, Hubspot, etc.)

But there are other things you can add if you need. Some examples:

• Client support chatbot;
• Scheduling platform (like Calendly or TidyCal);
• Social Network feed/sharing;
• Social proof;
• Popups.

L2 Step 3. Structure

The analysis part is over! Let's build your structure based on the goals, audience, and all the other information you gathered. This is the part where you should fully include your website designer.

It doesn't matter if you have a small or complex website. You need to set up the carcass and show dependencies. Choose the building blocks and then compile them into one cohesive system.

In the workbook, you'll find all the standard building blocks and examples of the structure.

You will build a complete business website architecture and then sort out the structure of each page and the header, and the footer contents.

L2 Step 4. Content

If you did all the previous steps and know for whom and why you're creating a website for your business, you understand the message you want to convey. And the best thing is to prepare this message in advance. Write at least drafts of the copy so the designer would know how much textual information is planned and the key ideas for different website areas.

The bits and pieces you gathered in this workbook will help you massively. Pay special attention to a mission statement and value proposition.

See my article on writing website content to have a clearer path, and my article about why content matters for designers to understand, well, why content matters for designers.

If followed along with this guide in your workbook, congratulations! You did a fantastic job, and now your designer can start creating a website for your business that will be an excellent tool for your growth. As a bonus, you now have a blueprint that you can use further for other marketing purposes. Just remember to review the information when your business goals shift.

If you’re stuck at any point or need customized guidance, I will be happy to help you. Hit me up for free consultation via Whatsapp or mail.

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