Just as no builder will start building a house from foundation and without proper drawings, you should not start building your webpage without a proper plan. A proper plan about which pieces this webpage will consist of and how these pieces will fit together with one another.

Also with both, building a house or a webpage, it is useful to know, who are going to be using the rooms/reading the pages that are being built and what are the wishes and needs of their users. With this we have help from a compendious, comprehensive and well thought through Web Content Strategy.

Lets make an assumption, that in your family, there are also children growing. They probably need that their room in your house would be well-lighted and in every way favorable to their development- there should be color and enough things to do, to assure development friendly environment.

In the same time, you will need to have an office in this house, to ensure the opportunity to engage in your work – this without disrupting factors and in thought conductive environment.

The same should be borne in mind when creating a website. When compiling a Web Content Strategy, the first step is mapping the webpages target groups and their information needs- what kind of information or necessary additional choices every target group needs. This mapping process will culminate with the so-called “table of contents” or “Content List” with the necessary web page content info for you.

If we have made clear, what facilities are needed in our house and what are the uses of all the spaces, then we should start creating the layout of these rooms. For a webpage this task is performed with web “wireframe”. In this phase we determine which pieces go where, so the user has a good and exhaustive overview of things offered to them.

In the next phase of webpage design we already start dealing directly with the webpage layout- we choose between colors, fonts and partition options.At the same time maybe you like splashing in the pool during the summer or when autumn frosts arrive, to grill in your gazebo instead of your yard. In the context of a webpage this means added functionalities- should there be a search box or where you can see the site map.

These things are also part of the web strategy and need to be thought through. Thought through should be also all sorts of utilities that your house is going to be connected to, whether it is electricity, gas line or a water well built together with your neighbor, in the same way you will need to think through your webpages links to other important pages and social media channels.

As your family grows, the need for extra space might come up and one cost-effective solution might be extending your house. Like an architect should make allowances for future additions to the house, a good content strategy leaves room for further developments- it will set in place the webs “development plan”, which is not necessary to immediately implement, but will foresee possible future steps.

Vision for your websites future development opportunities will be completed at this stage. Now if all these elements are put together, you will hold in your hands a comprehensive overview of the web you have planned- with all its parts, target groups, contents and additional functions.

Altex recommends always before starting work on new websites, or even when renewing already existing websites, to order Web Content Strategy for your page. This will save your time and money in the future and is in our opinion essential component in the process of building a website.

As we remember from the fairy tale about the wolf and three piglets, the last house standing belonged to Nuf-Nuf and was built with stones and on a proper foundation. Your website should be built similarly- it should be well thought through and following a proper plan.

Sven Lillepalu

sven.lillepalu@altex-experts.com

All photos by T.Rannu