1. Be specific about the audience
List the people the site must help: prospects, existing customers, partners, candidates or another group. For each audience, write down the questions they arrive with and what they should be able to do without contacting your team.
2. Define the primary action
Decide whether the site should generate enquiries, sell products, support bookings, explain a complex offer or help people find information. Secondary actions matter, but the primary action should guide the page structure and calls to action.
3. Plan pages and content owners
Create a sitemap before visual design starts. Identify who will provide and approve service descriptions, company details, images, legal content and portfolio evidence. Do not publish metrics, client names, certifications or testimonials without approval.
4. Agree scope and constraints
Record what is included, what is excluded, integrations, content migration, hosting, accessibility needs, privacy considerations, maintenance and who will make decisions. A clear scope is more useful than an ambitious feature list without priorities.
5. Decide how success will be measured
Choose useful measures before launch—for example, enquiry completion, relevant page visits or successful task completion. If analytics or tracking tools are used, confirm consent and privacy requirements rather than adding every possible tracker by default.
Quick checklist
- Audience and key user tasks
- Primary and secondary calls to action
- Page list and content owners
- Scope, integrations and exclusions
- Accessibility, privacy and hosting requirements
- Launch plan, ownership and measurement