*This may have been autogenerated and may not be 100% accurate or grammatically correct.

00:00 Focus on strategic planning for better website results.

04:57 Plan user flow, layout, navigation, and marketing.

07:24 Plan carefully before building your website.

*This may have been autogenerated and may not be 100% accurate or grammatically correct.

Most people, when they’re looking to do a website, they think of it as more of a thing about how it’s going to look and how it’s going to operate in terms of the features and the functionality. And they have all these concepts in their head that they like and they think that they want their website to have and it needs to to behave a certain way. There’s nothing wrong with having those ambitions, of course, but, how in fact, it is more counterintuitive to the actual process of getting your website done because it isn’t the most important thing to think about when you’re getting a website done. I have people approach me all the time and say, oh, I want this website to be done, and they have a very prescriptive approach, about it. And they come to you as a professional, but they’re basically telling you what they how it needs to be done and what they think is best for that site when, unfortunately, although they think they do, they don’t have a clue as to what goes into setting up a website so it can actually give them results, which is the most important thing. So instead of looking at things from the perspective of how my site needs to look and start thinking about all of those aesthetic things first of, you know, the latest features and bells and whistles that you could have. I promise you, If you do strategic planning first with someone who understands the process and understands how to direct you through do things based on the outcome that you’re looking for, you’re going to have way deeper insights into what you could do with your website, and, you’re going to get better results in the end. You’re going to save money, and you’re going to save time as well.

Marlon McPherson00:01:41 – 00:02:28

How, hey. My name is Marlon, and welcome back to another episode. I do content like this to help you, with the direction of your business or brand online through your website and for your content online content so you can get better results. Without further delay, let me just jump into the key points that I wanna include that I think you should include in your strategy. So the first thing that you need to cover in your strategy is the who and the what. Okay? So who is going to be using this website? Is it, well is obviously, it’s going to be for your potential customers, presumably, or clients. What do what what are they gonna be doing on the site. What is the ultimate goal that you want to set on that site in terms of how it’s going to help you get a result for them and for your business.

Marlon McPherson00:02:28 – 00:03:20

Right? So it could be I mean, there’s several things that a website could do, but you need to determine the primary thing that the website is there to do. And the website needs to be focused around that, and everything else is going to be secondary. If you have too many options and too many things that you want people to do, people take no actions. So it has to be focused. Right? So it could be that you simply want people to join your email lists so you can then follow-up with them via your email automations, your email marketing. It could also be that you want to send them to a landing page where they join, where they join a a membership of some sort, or it could be that you have a product on that page that you want to sell. And you need to know what exactly is gonna go on that page and how it needs to be laid out and optimized in order for it to to, to deliver the result that you want. Or it could be just informational.

Marlon McPherson00:03:20 – 00:04:23

You could just have the website being there to educate your potential customers and clients, and then, then eventually, they’ll come through to you by contacting you, and then they know already what to expect or they know a lot more about how your business operates and how the process works, etcetera, because you have it all laid out. It just depends. So these there are all different angles you could take with your website, and there there are a lot more things. It could also be that the website is more there to help your business deliver a a process. Right? Deliver on, a project or deliver on, the service it’s or whatever it might be. So it might help you to automate a lot of these things, and, therefore, it’s more a critical part of how you do your fulfillment. Again, these are several different ways, and it needs to be determined and thought through, through that strategy, session or sessions to document all of this. Now the next thing you need to include is what the user flow is going to be like.

Marlon McPherson00:04:23 – 00:04:57

So, think about your avatar, your customer profile, your client profile. What is it that they’re looking to do when they when they come to your website, what are the things that they need to do. And then you need to plan out a flow. They land on this page. The next thing they need to go to is here. The next thing they need see is this. And you’re going to plan that out to get them moving forward towards the end goal all the time, which is whatever we determine the goal is at the start. They need to be able to see clearly that path or you need to be able to guide them through that path seamlessly on your website.

Marlon McPherson00:04:57 – 00:06:32

So the user flow needs to be planned out as well, and that is gonna determine what pages, how the pages are going to be laid out, how you’re going to set up the navigation on your website, and so on and so forth. Right? The other critical thing that I think needs to be thought of in advance is also how the website is gonna be marketed. And some people don’t think about this at all, and some think about think about it as an afterthought. I think it should be thought about upfront because it is going to help you plan how the website is going to work with the marketing strategies that you are going to implement. So, for example, important. If you’re planning to have a blog on that same website that is going to be, hopefully, ranked in Google or in other search engines, you need to set things up in a way that it then drives people to the right parts of your website, and it’s optimized in such a way that everything, again, is seamless, and it’s all able to utilize the marketing strategy and keep people on the site, keep people consuming the blog post, and get into the right call to actions so they can do the thing that you want them to do. Right? So think about these things and, know that the website is not something that operates in a silo is something that is actually part of a bigger e bigger ecosystem known as your online ecosystem, that’s what I’m calling it right now. Right? It’s it’s really a tool just within a bigger space, and it needs to gel well with everything else.

Marlon McPherson00:06:32 – 00:07:24

So that’s why I think it’s important to figure out a marketing strategy and how that’s going to fit in with that. So that being said, you could do your strategy, as a one off service, and then you would then determine at the end of that strategy, okay, this is how what needs to go into my website. This is how it needs to be done. This is how much is likely to cost because only then can you really know, realistically what your website is potentially going to cost, because then you have a chance to dig into each individual thing that you need to look at. You might realize that, you know what? I don’t need this website at all at the end of doing a strategy session, and that’s completely fine because you might realize that the focus should be on something else before you even jump to the website. How, however, most times, it’s not gonna be that’s that’s not gonna be the case. You’re going to realize, hang on. Maybe I don’t need to have all these things right away done for the website.

Marlon McPherson00:07:24 – 00:08:25

I could have this kind of, like, phase one to it where I get the most important thing off the ground and launched first. And then you can build on that over the next few months or or years or whatever it is as time go on and as you need to, you can add on to it. So it’s not something that’s and all, and and you can’t change anything. So, it doesn’t all have to be built now, but you need to figure out what is the immediate objective active and what is the long term goal as well. So in the next 5 to 10 years, what that website is going to be doing within your business or brand. So I hope this makes sense to you, and you now think about doing strategy before you decide to build anything, well, well, especially your website because, again, it’s not worth the headache of jumping in, jumping ahead, and not actually figuring things out because it’s just probably not going to work the way you expected. So, that’s all I’ve got for you in this one. Let me know your thoughts as usual in the comments or if you drop me a line over on the website.

Marlon McPherson00:08:25 – 00:08:28

Exclude

0:00 – 08:28

How, and I will catch you in the next one. Take care.