Imagine sitting down with a designer to talk about your website project. Usually, there’s a bit of a back & forth where the designer asks questions to understand your brand, your project, and what exactly you’re looking for. 

Now imagine you’re able to slide ALL the information your designer needs across the table. Picture the look on their face when you clearly articulate your expectations for the website and your ultimate goals. So organized! So efficient! Such a dream client! 

When you finish this workbook, you will have:   

• Audience profiles for your primary and secondary audiences, which will shape the content, tone, and actions of your website to increase your conversions  

• Clearly identified website goals, including how you will track and measure goals and conversions to determine if your website is working for you 

• A brand overview, so your designer can effectively communicate the look, feel, and tone of your brand 

• A content package, including your website navigation ideas, media for your website, keywords to help optimize your site for search engines, and a plan for how content will be created and managed over time 

• All the tech details your designer needs, including domain & hosting setup, logins for third-party tools like Google Analytics, email newsletter sign-ups, and social media 

• Realistic skillset appraisal, so you’ll know which parts of the website project you can comfortably do yourself, and where to invest in a designer 

• A communication plan, so you and your designer can begin on the same page in terms of how to communicate approvals and edits 

• Your launch strategy, including a pre-launch checklist and a plan for how to announce your new website 

Meet your web design guide (Mariellen):

I’ve been building websites for 20 years and have been part of over 100 website projects. I love working with entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and small businesses looking to make a big impact with scrappy budgets. 

I created this workbook after noticing that some projects were easy to whip out quickly (my fastest website launch was up in less than 1 week), while others seemed to drag on forever (the longest I worked on a website before admitting it was never going to launch was 2 years! It’s still not up). 

I want to give clients the tools they need to enter the design process fully-prepared and make the major project of creating a website as simple as possible. I also want to save my fellow website designers from the all-too-common project headaches that prevent sites from launching quickly.