How planning your website in stages helps you achieve your goals.

You don’t have to do it all at once.

Going from zero to website can feel like a daunting task, but what if I said it doesn’t have to? The act of building a website is truly a progression of several mini-projects over the life of your business. Allow yourself to put more emphasis and focus on each of these mini-projects by breaking your website planning and development into stages.

What is decision fatigue?

Ever have a bunch of decisions you need to make in order to complete a project and just feel totally overwhelmed? That’s decision fatigue. It happens when you are looking at a large project as one point on your checklist instead of breaking it down into a series of smaller points to be checked in succession. Trying to approach a website this way adds the mental pressure of trying to find one perfect solution for everything instead of the best solution for each individual problem.

The best part is, you can avoid decision fatigue by asking yourself just one question.

Take a look at your website. What is the ONE most important thing it needs to help your business?

The one in that question is emphasized for a reason. You are not looking to answer it by making a list of everything that your website could use to help your business. You are only trying to pinpoint one thing. By focusing on that limitation in the thought process, it forces you to prioritize.

Your priority may be time-sensitive, need to address something that’s not working as well as it could, or may be motivated by what will bring the biggest impact. No matter what, the answer is the one thing that your website absolutely can not wait for.

Once your website’s one thing has been identified, write it down and make sure you can physically see it for the duration of the process.

Each time a decision must be made about the website, your goal is now to answer based on how it will bring you closer to accomplishing that one thing. Again, by adding a limitation to the process of planning your website update, you are creating parameters by which to guide your decisions. This allows you to think in terms of your mini-project’s ultimate end goal, a method that is much more effective than simply “knowing it when you see it.”

Remember: Build, assess, refine.

It is an unrealistic expectation to think your website will be perfect for your business once and forever once you make it to launch. Planning your website in stages allows you to focus on solving one problem at a time, and then assess and refine as necessary before moving on. 

Your business and website will grow together as they both mature.