Planning a website

I know I've got to produce a marketing plan if I want my marketing to work and that I'll be asked for a business plan by the Bank Manager when I need a loan.   We threw together a list of bullet points and general guidelines when we started the marketingplanwiz website but they were brief (we didn't think so at the time I have to say) because we'd written all the rest of our plans in the "business plan" that we'd laboured over and were justly proud of.

I was reminded today that producing a proper plan for a website is important.  Not just what we ask the web designer to put together (as we tend to think of our websites as a just another promotional tool) but the real purpose of building the site in the first place.  Of course we know it should look the same as our other marketing materials and show our products and services, "contact us" and the rest. Then we end up spending a lot of time building the site with ideas for navigation, functionality and "look and feel" (feeling very pleased with ourselves for remembering all of this), completely forgetting in the process that we haven't worked out the objectives of the site (is it for information or do you want people to buy?), how it will display our branding values? Who is the target audience?

I always think I know these things of course (I'm a marketer so I'm supposed to let's face it) so off I go and ask somebody to make a website somehow imagining that they'll be on my wavelength and just do it right.   Obviously they don't so it's back to square one - planning.  

Karen McNulty

MarketingPlanWiz