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Planning a small site in an afternoon

A small site has a fixed number of decisions worth making before you touch a template: what it's for, who reads it, what order the blocks go in, and how someone gets in touch. Settle those on paper first and the build itself takes an afternoon.

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The planning sequence

Four steps, four things written down

A site plan is not a mood board or a colour choice. It is four short decisions, each one written down as a specific answer, and each answer becomes the reference point for everything that follows.

  1. Purpose: what the site has to do

    Write one sentence stating what the site achieves for you. 'Tells people I do boiler servicing in Leeds and lets them book a call' is a purpose; 'a website for my plumbing business' is not, because it doesn't say what happens once someone arrives. The output is that sentence, because page count, wording and the contact method in step four all get checked against it later.

    If you can't write the sentence, the site isn't ready to plan yet, it needs a decision first.

    An informational site

    The job is to answer questions: who you are, what you do, where you cover. Most club, society and community group sites fall here.

    A transactional site

    The job is to produce an enquiry, booking or sale. Most sole trader and event pages fall here, and the contact method has to match that job.

  2. Audience: who arrives, and what they're asking

    Name the person landing on the page and the question they came with. A community choir's visitor is usually asking when rehearsals are and whether they can just turn up; a wedding supplier's visitor is asking whether they're free on a date and what it costs. The output is that short list of questions, because it decides the page count in step three: one page per distinct question, unless one page can answer two without burying either.

    One audience, one question

    A single page usually covers it. A campaign page with one job (see /campaign-page.html) is often the right shape here.

    Several audiences, several questions

    Each distinct question gets its own page or its own clearly separated section, so one answer doesn't sit behind another.

  3. Blocks: what the page contains, in order

    List the sections the page needs, in the order a visitor needs them: who you are, what you do, for whom, where, proof, and how to get in touch. The output is that ordered list, and it decides what sits above the fold, meaning the part of the page visible before anyone scrolls, because the first thing shown should answer the visitor's first question.

    A club or society

    Proof usually means what happens at a session and who runs it.

    A sole trader or event organiser

    Proof usually means past work, area covered, or a specific credential, since that's what a paying customer checks before enquiring.

  4. Contact method: how someone actually gets in touch

    Decide whether the site collects an enquiry through a form, or simply points to a phone number or email address. The output is that decision, plus, where it's a form, a note of what data it collects and why. That note matters because a form asking for a name, email and message is processing personal data, and UK GDPR applies from the moment the site goes live.

    A form

    You need a lawful basis for holding the data and a clear statement of what happens to it, covered in /enquiry-forms-and-data.html.

    A phone number or mailto link

    No data is captured on the site itself, so there's less to plan here, though the number or address still needs to stay current.

These four outputs, purpose, audience, blocks and contact method, are the fields the one-page site plan template asks for next.

The blocks a page needs, and the order they answer in

A visitor to a small site works through a fixed set of questions, and the page reads well when it answers them in the order they arrive. This holds whether the site is a single screen or the ten pages covered in What a Mini-Site Is, and When One Page Is Enough.

The blocks in order

  • Who you are: the name of the business or group, stated plainly.
  • What you do: the service or activity, in the words a customer types into a search bar.
  • Who it's for: the type of customer or member the site is aimed at, so a visitor can tell within a line whether they are in the right place.
  • Where: the area covered or the location. A mobile plumber and a choir with a weekly rehearsal both lose visitors who cannot tell whether the site covers them.
  • Proof: something that shows a claim is true, such as a list of qualifications, a description of the work carried out, or the history of an event. Not a star rating with nothing behind it.
  • How to get in touch: one clear method, whether that is a phone number, an email address, or a form.

What goes above the fold

Above the fold is the part of the page a visitor sees before they scroll, named after the fold in a newspaper that decided which story ran on the front half. On a phone screen that is a few hundred pixels, so it has to carry who you are, what you do, and who it's for. Where, proof and contact can wait for the scroll, because a visitor who has not placed those first three within a few seconds rarely scrolls to find the rest.

A wedding photographer's homepage that opens on a full-screen photograph with no caption fails this twice over, because it delays who and what past the point where most visitors have already decided to leave. A single line naming the service and the area covered, set over or beside the image, fixes both problems without touching the photograph.

Writing these six blocks down before opening any design tool is what turns this into a decision.

The one-page plan

The fields to fill in before you build anything

One page, filled in before you touch a builder or a template. Each field feeds a decision later, so leave nothing blank on the theory that it is obvious.

  • The one-line purpose

    What the site needs to make happen: a phone call, a booking, an enquiry form filled in. If you cannot say it in one sentence, the site will not say it either.

  • The visitor and the question they arrive with

    Name who lands on the page and the exact question in their head, such as a bride searching for a wedding photographer covering her venue's postcode.

  • The list of pages, each against a distinct question

    One page per question a visitor arrives with. Two questions can share a page only if the page answers both without burying either.

  • What goes above the fold

    The part visible before scrolling on a phone screen: who you are, what you do, and the way to act, in that order.

  • Proof, named specifically

    What tells a stranger you are real: years trading, membership of a trade body, past work they can see. Not the word 'trusted' on its own.

  • The one contact method the page pushes hardest

    A form, a phone number, an email address. Pick one as the default and let the others sit underneath it.

  • What the site will not do yet

    Anything you are deliberately leaving out for now, such as online payment or a blog, so it does not creep back in halfway through building.

Nothing here needs a platform, a domain or a designer. It is a page of decisions you can make with a pen, and every later choice checks back against it.

With the plan written down, the next decision is where the site actually lives.

A domain, a nameserver and a host are three separate things that get sold together, and confusing them is the easiest way to lose control of a site later.

Read domains, DNS and hosting, explained once See the launch checklist and the first month