the Coup

Baking a Better Website

To make the most of your site’s redesign, understand that a better website begins with a list of everything it will contain.

A Website is like a Kitchen

You wouldn’t move into a new home with all your dishes and groceries if there wasn’t a room with cabinets and a refrigerator to hold it all. The same goes for your website, except that we aren’t preparing for forks and juice and flour. In fact, a site is much less predictable and we won’t know what we need the site to contain until we take an inventory.

Blogs and Silverware Drawers

You might think, that’s silly, we need an about page and some staff bios. All the usual stuff. But will you have news? Will it be your agency news or news about things happening in the world? Or news about the agency from other sources? Do these belong in the same drawer? Do these things all have the same shelf life, or should your spot on CNN stay up a little longer than the bit about your December bake sale? In addition to all this news, are you interested in more casually blogging? Should some of this percolate up to the homepage? Or can we tuck it back behind the rice and flour, there only if we need it?

Resources and Spice Racks

The list continues. What about the resources you’ve gathered over the years? These are great things to keep your visitors coming back. But if no one can find what they’re looking for, they’re useless. PDF reports and partner links, fact sheets and how-to tips: do these belong clustered in the same cabinet as your annual reports, newsletters, and member perks?

Build a complete inventory first, and then we can build a website with a proper place to put things. We’ll make it easier for your visitor to find what they’re looking for, and perhaps more importantly, what you want them to see. And if you’re thorough with your inventory, we’ll make it possible for you to add things later without disrupting the site’s aesthetics and organization.

Now let’s cook.

Wait, where’s the stove? Where’s the sink?! A kitchen that contains all of our things would be useless if we didn’t plan space for our activities. A place to chop and stir. Will people buy things on your site? Sign up? Respond? Think of what you want people to do when they visit your site or they won’t be able to do it. The best visits will lead to some tangible activity. If you don’t plan for this, it won’t happen.

Housewarming party and your website’s menu

As you begin to plan for your site, resist the urge to think about the main menu. It’s silly to plan the appetizers before your kitchen has been built. After we’ve made our lists and thought about how we want people to use your website, we can work our way up, thinking about how to group these things into sections and pages. Later, we’ll think about your visitors and make a guest list (vegan, allergic to peanuts). Then—and only then—can we plan our menu.

Microwave dinners and fast-food delivery

Eye-candy and a quick website launch might be tempting. But your site’s visitors will likely leave unfulfilled and undernourished. A thorough planning process inevitably leads to a site that balances your goals with your visitors needs, good looks with room to grow.

Finished? Next read Writing for the Web.