Before you reach for that shiny new WordPress theme. Before you start dragging and dropping content boxes on your website building platform of choice. Before you skip off to Canva and start designing graphics from the glorious smorgasbord of templates all so beautifully, easily, ready and waiting at the tips of your fingers.
Before you start pulling your wildly wanted website screaming into life.
Can you quickly, and easily, right now, describe the purpose of your website?
Can you, with just as much ease, describe for me the purpose of your brand?
You should be over halfway through the brand process. You should be armed with all the strategy and planning you need to make wildly wanted design choices! Before you go anywhere near your website design there’s a lot of shoulds to be ticking off!
But you know what happens to good intentions. They get filed under that stack of life you have growing its own community on your desk right now, and for the love of flip flops on a sunny day you’ve just got to get something, anything, up there on your site before Google gives your seat to someone else.
STOP.
Your website can wait.
And while you absolutely can not use this email as an excuse to put off getting your website up and WORKING FOR YOU. You can use this as the fuel you need to sit down and think. To make decisions out of data. To collect real actionable information that will help you make solid, brand-building, decisions. Not quick fix grab-a-template-and-go chaos!
Your website, while it is one of the more fun places to explore and test your brand, can be a prickly place when approached without proper preparation.
So how can you prepare before you start swinging design styles across the page!
You need POWER.
The POWER process is the place all design decisions are created. The place your skills and the science of design collide to create your power brand.
Purpose (Intention + Character) > Outcome (Opportunities + Offers) > Worldview (Positioning + Promise) > Experience (Verbal + Visual Language) > Review & Repeat
Without getting clear on your POWER, your website, as pretty as it may be doused in design templates, will be missing the elements that create a wildly wanted website.
When you’ve been through the POWER process. When you are ready to start designing your website with all the information you need in your hands. Start collecting the verbal and visual language your brand needs in the most simple form.
Open a word doc and start writing!
Write everything and anything.
Start with as many words as you can to describe what you want to be wanted for and come back to this doc every time you find yourself saying something that you think sounds really good! Every time you have a conversion in real life or online and you feel like you said it so well. Add those words to your google doc.
Do the same for the visual language. Create a folder and start saving any imagery and photos you feel reflect what you want to be wanted for. If you’re feeling brave. Open Pinterest and start a board for your visual language there. But be warned. Set a timer when you open Pinterest or else you’ll wake up 3 days later unsure what you came for but with a great idea for a new dining table made from crafts!
Now you’re prepared.
Now, when it comes time to start designing your site, you’ll have your armor ready to defend your brand from the onslaught of design themes you’re about to unleash on yourself.
Be ready.
There is nothing more likely to destroy your wildly wanted website plans than a pretty preloaded website template!
They lure you in with their easy-to-use themes and ready-to-go simplicity. BE WARNED! BUT you absolutely can create a wildly wanted website while keeping things easy and fast with templates.
Not sure you know where to start in the [POWER] process for your brand? Get Gutsy: Your Weekly Brand Reputation Briefing shipped to your inbox every Friday >
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