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How to Plan Your Wix Website Before You Touch the Editor

The 6-step planning process that saves weeks of frustration and gets you a website worth being proud of.


Let me describe a scene I've witnessed more times than I can count.


Someone decides to build their Wix website. They're excited. They open the editor, pick a template that looks nice, and start moving things around. A few hours in, something feels off. They change the colours. They rewrite the homepage headline four times. They can't decide what to put on which page. Three weeks later, they have a half-built site they're not happy with and the creeping suspicion that they've been doing this wrong.


The problem, almost always, isn't the platform. It isn't even the design. It's that they opened Wix before they'd done the thinking — and trying to think and build simultaneously is a recipe for going in circles.


Here are the six planning steps I walk through with every client before we touch Wix. You can do all of them with a notebook and an honest hour of thinking time.


In this article:

  • Why planning before building makes such a big difference

  • The 6 planning steps to complete before opening Wix

  • What to do if you feel stuck at any stage

  • How to know when you're genuinely ready to start building


Person in denim checking a smartwatch at a laptop on a black table. A phone lies nearby. Sunlight casts shadows, suggesting focus.

Why Planning Before You Build Makes Such a Difference

Planning your website before you open the editor saves time, reduces decisions, and produces a clearer, more coherent result — because you're building from a foundation of thinking rather than figuring it out as you go.


Without planning, you end up making the same decisions repeatedly instead of making them once, clearly, before you start. Planning moves those decisions to the thinking stage, where you have the space and clarity to make them well.


There's also a practical benefit: planning makes the build faster. Once you know what goes on each page, what the navigation structure looks like, and what content you need to write, the actual building is much more straightforward. You're executing a plan rather than inventing one.


The 6 Steps to Planning Your Wix Website

The six planning steps — purpose, audience, content, structure, visuals, and content writing — give you everything you need before you open the editor. Skip any of them at your peril.


Before anything else, get clear on what your website is supposed to do. Not 'have an online presence' — that's not a purpose, it's a category. What specific actions do you want visitors to take? What problems should your website solve for the people who land on it? What should someone have done, felt, or decided by the time they leave?


For most small service businesses, the primary purpose is straightforward: book a discovery call, enquire about services, or get in contact. But it's worth being specific. A website whose purpose is 'get enquiries from coaches who want a Wix website build' makes every subsequent decision — what pages to include, what to say on them, where to put CTAs — much easier. A website whose purpose is vaguely 'look professional' makes them all harder.


Try This: Write down your website's single primary purpose in one sentence. Then write its two or three secondary purposes. Keep this visible as you work through the remaining steps.

The second step is to get a clear, specific picture of the person your website is speaking to. Not a demographic bracket — a real person. What is her situation right now? What is she searching for? What does she want more than anything? What makes her hesitate? What language does she use to describe her own problem?


This matters because everything about your website — the words, the structure, the calls to action, the tone — should be calibrated for this specific person. A website written for 'women in business' is less compelling than one written for 'female coaches who've been running their business for two years, know their stuff, but whose website still looks like they're just starting out'. The more specific your picture, the more specific your site — and specificity is what creates connection.


Try This: Write a paragraph describing your ideal client as if she were a real person sitting across from you. Include her situation, her frustrations, her aspirations, and the language she'd use. Pin it somewhere visible while you build.

Now plan the structure of your website — which pages you need and how they connect. This is your sitemap, and getting it right before you start building saves enormous amounts of time and rework.


For most small service businesses, five to seven pages is the right starting point: Home, About, Services (one page or separate pages per service), a Blog or Resources section if relevant, Contact, and possibly a Testimonials page if you have a strong body of social proof. More than that can overwhelm visitors; fewer can leave too many questions unanswered. Think about the journey you want a visitor to take: where do they land? where do you want them to go next? what pages do they need to visit to feel confident enough to contact you? Map that journey before you start building it.


Try This: Sketch your sitemap on paper. List every page you think you need, draw arrows to show how they connect, and identify the primary call to action on each. Does the journey make sense? Are there any pages missing — or any that you don't actually need?

Content — the words and images on your website — is the thing most people underestimate when they start building. They open Wix, find a template they like, and then discover that without real content to fill it with, the site looks exactly like the template. And templates, for obvious reasons, are designed for nobody in particular.


Before you start building, gather the raw material: your service descriptions (even in rough note form), your story (the key points of your 'why'), your testimonials (reach out to clients now if you don't have written ones), your professional photos (or decide who'll take them), any other supporting content like case studies, FAQs, or credentials. You don't need everything to be polished — you need it to exist so you're not trying to write your website copy at the same time as building the website. The two processes done simultaneously is a recipe for analysis paralysis.


Try This: Make a content checklist for each page: what copy does it need, what images, what proof points? Then start gathering that content — even in rough draft form. The building will go far faster once the content exists.

Get clear on how you want your website to feel. Not just look — feel. Calm and reassuring? Bold and energetic? Warm and creative? Minimal and professional? The feeling is the starting point for the visual direction, and the visual direction guides every subsequent design decision: colour palette, typography, image style, layout.


Gather visual references — screenshots of websites you admire, images that feel 'on brand', colour combinations that resonate. Pinterest and Google are brilliant for this. You don't need to know why you like them; you just need to know that you do. This mood-board becomes your visual north star when you're in the editor and starting to question every decision. It also helps enormously if you're working with a designer — giving them a visual reference is far more useful than trying to describe in words what 'warm and professional but not corporate' means.


Try This: Spend 30 minutes gathering visual references on Pinterest or a simple folder of screenshots. What colours, layouts, and image styles feel right for your brand? What do they have in common? Use this to guide your template choice and design decisions.

This is the step most people skip — and the one that makes the biggest difference. Write at least the copy for your homepage, your About page, and your services descriptions before you open Wix. Even in rough form. Even just as bullet points that you'll refine later.


Writing copy inside the editor — where you're simultaneously thinking about design, layout, spacing, fonts, and words — is genuinely very hard.


Separating the writing from the building means you can give each its full attention. Your homepage headline, your services section, your about-me summary — get these drafted in a document first. Then, when you open Wix, you're placing content rather than creating it. The difference in speed and quality is significant.


Try This: Open a blank document and write rough drafts for: your homepage headline and subheading, your 'who I help' paragraph, one service description (outcomes first), and your about page opening. Don't edit — just write. You'll refine it later. The goal is to have something real to work with when you open the editor.


What to Do If You Get Stuck at Any Stage

Getting stuck in the planning process almost always means one of two things: not enough clarity on your ideal client, or trying to plan and write at the same time. The fix for both is to slow down, not speed up.


If you find yourself going in circles at any step, don't push through by opening Wix. That's a shortcut that creates more problems than it solves. Instead, take the stuck feeling as useful information: you need more clarity before you can move forward.


  • For ideal client clarity: answer Step 2 for one specific real client — someone you've already worked with and loved. Describe her, specifically. That description is more useful than a generalised persona.

  • For copy blocks: try talking instead of writing. Record yourself explaining what you do and who you help on a voice note, then transcribe it. Spoken language is almost always clearer and more natural than written first drafts.

  • For structural uncertainty: look at two or three websites of people who do similar work to you (not to copy, but for structure reference). How have they organised their content? What pages do they have?


How to Know When You're Ready to Start Building

You're ready when you have a clear purpose, a specific ideal client in mind, a mapped-out site structure, rough content for at least your key pages, and a visual direction. Not perfection — readiness.


When those boxes are ticked, open Wix, pick a template that fits your structure and visual direction, and start building from a position of clarity rather than hope. The experience is genuinely different — and the result will be too.


Frequently Asked Questions

For a straightforward small business website, working through the six steps thoroughly should take somewhere between four and ten hours of focused thinking and writing time — spread over a few sessions rather than done in one go. This investment in planning almost always saves significantly more time in the building phase.

No — but you do need to decide during the planning phase whether you're going to get professional photos taken, use high-quality personal photos, or use stock imagery. If brand photography is part of the plan, it makes sense to schedule it before you start building so you're not launching with placeholder images.

AI tools can be useful at certain stages — particularly for generating first drafts of copy and brainstorming page structures. But they work best as a starting point, not a shortcut around the thinking. The most important steps — getting clear on your purpose, your ideal client, and your visual direction — require you to do the actual thinking. AI can help you express what you already know; it can't do the knowing for you.

The same six steps apply — possibly even more so. The temptation when rebuilding is to start from the old site and iterate. But often the most useful thing is to go back to first principles: what does this website need to achieve now, for the business as it is today? Use the old site as a content reference, not as a structural template. Plan first.


Plan First. Build Second. Thank Yourself Later!

The time you invest in planning your Wix website before you open the editor is almost never wasted. Every hour of thinking now saves two hours of reworking later — and produces a website that feels intentional, coherent, and genuinely reflective of the business you're building.


Work through the six steps in order. Be honest at each stage. And if you get stuck — particularly at the clarity end — don't push through by opening Wix. Get the clarity first. The editor will still be there when you're ready, and you'll build something far better when you arrive with a plan.


Your website deserves more than a hopeful start. It deserves a good one.


Want guided help with every step of this process?

Peak Foundations — my website planning course — has been created to take women in business from overwhelmed and unclear to confident and genuinely ready to build. It's warm, practical, jargon-free, and designed around the exact process in this article.






About The Author

Nancy Detchon is the founder of Peak Net Web Design and a business professional with 30+ Years Experience - Wix Web Design - 5* Wix Legend Partner - Female Business Owner - Micro Business Champion.


Based in the Peak District, Nancy specialises in turning complicated website problems and chaos into calm, clear solutions — with a particular passion for helping female founders build an online presence they're proud of.


When she's not designing websites, she's reading crime fiction, planning holidays and festival trips, making sure she drinks enough water and doing battle with her garden.


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