Decide what your website is for
A website strategy workshop is a short series of remote sessions that decide what your website is for before anyone designs a page. We work out who it is meant to reach, what you want those people to do, and how the site should be structured to make that happen. The output is a written strategy you can build from, hand to a designer, or use to brief us.
Plenty of websites are redesigned on instinct. The home page gets a new look, the wording is tidied, and six months later the same problems remain because nobody agreed what the site was supposed to achieve. A workshop puts that decision first, so the design serves a goal instead of guessing at one.
What we work through
The workshop covers the decisions a designer cannot make for you. These are parallel concerns rather than steps, and the sessions move between them as the picture sharpens.
Audience and intent
Who visits, what brings them, and what they already believe before they arrive. A site written for everyone speaks to no one, so we get specific about the people who matter most.
Goals and the primary action
The one thing you most want a visitor to do, and the secondary paths for people who are not ready yet. Naming the primary action is what stops a site trying to do everything at once.
Messaging and positioning
What you do, who you do it for, and why you over the alternative, in plain language a visitor reads rather than decodes. This is where most sites quietly lose people.
Structure and sitemap
The pages you actually need, how they relate, and what each one is there to do. We keep it to what earns its place, drawing on how we approach information architecture.
Measurement
How you will know the site is working, in numbers you can genuinely track. A goal you cannot measure is a hope, so we agree what success looks like before anyone builds.
How the workshop runs
The workshop runs remotely across a small number of sessions, spread over a week or two. Splitting it up is deliberate: shorter sessions are easier to schedule around a working week, and the gaps give you and your team time to think between them.
Session one: goals and audience
Around ninety minutes on who the site serves and what it needs to achieve. We leave with a shared definition of success that the rest of the work hangs off.
Session two: messaging and structure
Around ninety minutes turning that definition into how you say what you do and the sitemap that supports it. The shape of the site starts to settle here.
Session three: primary actions and measurement
Around ninety minutes agreeing the actions you want visitors to take and how you will measure whether they do. By the end, the strategy is decided rather than discussed.
Between sessions we send a short summary and a working draft. You react to it with your team and bring those reactions to the next session, so the strategy is shaped by you rather than handed down.
What you get
The workshop produces a written website strategy you own outright. It is the brief that should exist before any redesign begins, and it is specific enough that any competent designer or developer can build from it.
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A defined audience and primary action Who the site is for and the single thing you most want them to do.
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Messaging notes What to say, who to say it to, and the order to say it in.
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A sitemap with a purpose for every page The pages you need and what each one is there to do.
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A measurement plan So you can tell, later, whether the site is doing its job.
The document is yours. Take it anywhere. Build it yourself, give it to your designer, or bring it back to us. The strategy stands on its own.
Who the workshop is for
A workshop is the right step when the thinking needs to happen before the building.
Where the workshop leads
The strategy is useful on its own, and many teams take it straight into a build with whoever they already work with. When the next step is ours, it becomes the brief for a user experience design engagement or a custom web application, with the goals and structure already agreed. Either way, the design starts from a decision rather than a guess.
Book a website strategy workshop
Tell us what you are planning and where you are stuck. The initial conversation is free, takes about thirty minutes, and comes with no obligation. Read more about what working with us looks like, or get in touch directly.
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