Last Updated on January 22, 2026 by Paula

Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” And I firmly believe that! If you want to succeed at anything,  you have to create a plan, This goes for everything from planning out your workday to planning out your website. In this post, we’re going to look at 8 things you need to plan and prepare before you start building your new website.

Why You Need To Plan Your Website

You don’t want to just build your website, or have a designer build your website, with no thought going into it. And I’m not just talking of thoughts of the design. A beautiful website is great!

But if it doesn’t help you meet your business goals, then it has failed at its job.

Your website is an important part of your online presence and you want it to work just as hard as you do.

8 Things to Do Before You Build Your Website

Determine the Purpose and Goal of Your Website

Before you build your website, the most important step is to determine the purpose of your website. For most business owners it is to create brand awareness and sell your services/programs to your potential client.

You also want to consider your business goals.

If your goal is to book more clients, your website should help you do that. Your sales page should make it clear who is a perfect fit for working with you, and overcome any objections they might have to working with you. Your FAQs should answer any questions potential clients have.  Your contact page should make it very easy to book time with you. There should be a clear call to action on every page of your website that leads your clients on a journey to working with you.

So think about your business goals. Your main goal could be growing your email list or gaining subscribers for your podcast or getting potential clients to book a discovery call. How can your website support those goals? 

Create Your Brand Guidelines

Branding is the process of creating a unique name, message, and image in a potential client’s mind. There are several questions you can ask yourself that will help you gain clarity around what your brand is about. 

• Who is your target audience?
• What solutions do you offer to your client’s problems?
• What transformation/benefits does your client make/have after working with you?
• How do you do the above better than anyone else?
• What are your company values?
• What is your mission statement?

Your brand is communicated through every single action your business takes.

It’s communicated not just on your website, but in your content, in marketing materials, in social media posts, and with any interaction, you have with potential clients and customers.

Branding is communicated both online and off. Your brand is an essential element of your marketing success. So you can see why it’s important to be clear on your brand before you build your website. 

Determine your brand assets

Your brand assets are the visual representation of the above.  You’ll need…

1.) Logo –  A logo should be simple, memorable, and expressive. Keep in mind that you don’t have to have a logo, but it can be an effective branding tool when it’s done right.

2.) Colors – Colors evoke emotions. Make sure that the colors you choose for your website, logo, and marketing materials all reflect the emotions you want your audience to feel.

3.) Font – The font you choose is important. It needs to be easy to read. It should also convey the right image. For example, a tax accountant probably doesn’t want to use Comic Sans as their website font. No one should ever use Comic Sans period.

4.) Photos/images – There are different photographic and image styles to consider. For example, some businesses use a cartoon or drawing style for their images, while others are more stylish or traditional.

Creating your branding assets isn’t easy, and it is best left to someone who offers these services, but it’s often not in the budget if you’re just starting out.

For clients who come to me with no brand assets and a small budget, I recommend The Five Minute Brand. It’s a set of 40 complete brand boards that come with everything you need to get started.

Decide on the pages you need

I wrote an in-depth blog post about the pages needed for new websites here. So I’ll just give a quick recap, these are the pages you must have for launch.

Homepage – Your homepage serves as a landing page for your readers. It needs to have many different elements to educate your visitors about your business, get conversions, and attract people to the other parts of your website.

About – Your about page is one of the most essential pages on your entire website. This is where your readers will go not only to learn more about you, but learn about how your business can help them get the transformation they are looking for.

Work With Me – Your work with me page lets clients know exactly what you offer and how they can work with you.

Contact – While some websites might throw up a quick contact us page as sort of an afterthought, you should spend some time on your contact page because this is likely where you’ll start building a relationship with your clients.

Policy Pages – you may need several. A privacy policy is a must for all of us. Other legal pages you may need include- disclaimers, disclosures, terms and conditions, refund policies, copyright notice.

Choose your domain name

Your domain name is what people will type into a browser like Chrome to find your website. Your hosting is where all the content on your website is stored. We’ll look at it in the next step.

Start brainstorming what domain name/s you would like to have and make a list of them. It’s important to have a back-up in case the domain name you want is unavailable. Example: paulahickey.com was already taken, so I chose to add my maiden name to get paulasextonhickey.com.

Here are a few tips for choosing your domain name:

• Try to get a .com extension to your domain name. This is what most people will automatically think of when typing a URL.
• Make sure your domain name will be easy to remember and easy to spell.
• Don’t choose a really long domain name if you can help it. If it makes sense, try a shortened version of your business name.
• Namecheap is a trusted place to purchase a domain name at an affordable price.

Choose your website’s content management system and host

While platforms like Squarespace, Show it and Wix are popular, I highly recommend WordPress.org for your content management system. WordPress is a free platform and most hosting companies will have a way to easily install it.

You will also need to choose a host that works well with WordPress. My host of choice is Lyrical Host. Read my review of Lyrical Host here.

Here are a few tips to think about when choosing your host:

• Before choosing a host, make sure that they are equipped to handle WordPress.
• Look into your potential host’s pricing. They may be offering an irresistible deal now, but how much will that pricing go up when you renew?
• Do some research into their customer service. How helpful and responsive are they?
• Do you have to pay extra for things like an SSL certificate, Malware scanning, email storage? You will need these things, but you shouldn’t have to pay extra for them.

Decide if you will DIY or hire a designer

Will you be building your website yourself? Or will you be hiring a web designer? Either way you plan to go knowing the answers to the above sections will make the building process easier.

Do you know you’ll need a web designer? Book a free discovery call with me!

Create a marketing plan for after launch

Once your new website launches, how do you plan to get traffic there? It’s a good idea to think about this and have a plan in place before you build your website.

1. SEO is a great way to drive organic traffic to your website. And one of the best ways to do this is with a blog, so if SEO will be part of your strategy you will want to add a blog to the list of pages you will need.
2. Pinterest is another great source, but it isn’t great for all niches.  Read this post that gives some great tips on which niches do well on Pinterest. Again, websites with blogs do well on Pinterest.
3. Ads. You can consider using Facebook or Google ads to bring traffic to your website. One of the best ways to do this is to have the ad go to a landing page that allows you to capture the visitor’s email address so you can nurture them from a lead to a client.
4. Local SEO. Are you a local brick-and-mortar business? Then putting some time in Local SEO will be worth it for you.

As you can see there is a lot that goes into creating a new website! But by taking the time to have all the above in planned out and ready to go, you’ll make the process a whole lot easier!