Develop Your Plan
In Short
- Know what the website will achieve
- Become familiar with how to achieve it
- Outline, outline, outline
If you haven't already, go ahead and scan through Understanding Audience and Understanding Purpose. You should already know the answers to the questions posed, but use it as a refresher before getting started on this section.
Step 1: What Your Website is Supposed to Achieve?
Specifically, what is the overall goal of the website's purpose? Is it:
- Get new users who might be unfamiliar to your company?
- Sell products?
- House an intranet for distributors?
- Get to #1 on Google for «search term» so people will visit your brick and mortar store?
Chances are, it's more than one of these, and that's fine, but first determine the most important goal. If you want to sell products online, getting to the top of Google's rankings is going to do nothing if no one can purchase from your site.
Step 2: What can Javelin do for you?
Ideally, this question should have been answered early on in the design process. Any custom modules (such as the Products module) may have already been added to your site during development. For the more specific ideas, look through the available modules and become at least a little familiar with what is being offered. Doing so will allow you to better create a plan of attack for putting your website together. If you have questions, ask your project manager or file a support ticket.
Step 3: Write it Down
90% of people hate this next step: Make an Outline.
Websites practically are outlines. They are organized in a hierarchical fashion (top-level to sub-level) and in order of importance (first item to last item).
- Home
- Homepage Content
- About
- About the Company
- About the Owner
- Staff
What About Bob?
Bob created an outline that incorporated what he'd already discussed about his website (template items and custom modules). His outline includes which modules he'll use where. At one point, he's unsure, so he marked two options. Bob also included some functionality for his site. This functionality is included in his modules, and is only there to remind him of how he wants to use it. As a final helper, he's color coded his outline to better understand his intentions at a glance.
