Sitemap & Content.

Why this comes before design

People want to skip to the visual. It's tempting. But if you start designing before you know what's on each page, you'll design a beautiful homepage that doesn't actually fit the content the client needs to put on it. Then you redesign. Then you redesign again.

Sitemap and content planning takes a couple of hours. Skipping it costs you days.

The deliverables

By the end of this chapter you should have two simple artifacts:

1. A sitemap

   A flat list of every page on the site, with parent/child relationships if any.

2. A content matrix

   A table with one row per page, with columns for: page goal, primary CTA, must-have sections, content the client owes you.

Both can live in a single Google Doc, a Notion page, or a markdown file. Don't fancy it up.

How to build the sitemap

Start with the goals from your strategy doc. For each goal, ask: which page does this live on? If a goal needs more than one page, that tells you the structure.

The right number of pages

Most small business and nonprofit sites need 4 to 7 pages. Anything more and you're either building an actual content site (in which case different rules apply) or padding because someone thinks "more pages = more legitimate." It doesn't.

Common page recipes:

• Service business (4 pages): Home, Services, About, Contact
• Nonprofit (5 pages): Home, Mission, What We Do, Donate/Get Involved, Contact
• Coach/consultant (4-6 pages): Home, Work With Me, About, Resources, Contact
• Local service with multiple offerings (6-8 pages): Home, plus one page per major service, plus About, Contact

Single-page sites

Tempting, especially for very small clients. They work for a tight scope: one product, one event, one campaign. They don't work when the client has multiple audiences or needs deep content per offering. If you're cramming everything onto one page, build multiple instead.

Decide who owns what before you fill the matrix

Before you can write down "client owes me their bio and three photos," you need to agree on who's responsible for what. This is a conversation, not an assumption. Two big decisions:

Who's writing the copy?

Three options, and you need to lock one in upfront:

• The client writes everything. They draft all the copy. You publish it as-is, or with light proofreading. This is fine if they're a strong writer or the brand voice is very specific to them. Cheapest for them, easiest for you in some ways, but the timeline depends entirely on how fast they can write.
• You write everything. You take their intake responses and produce the copy. Full creative control, faster timeline (you don't wait for their drafts), but priced higher because copywriting is real work.
• Hybrid: they draft, you optimize. They give you rough copy or talking points. You rewrite for clarity, voice, SEO, and readability. Most common arrangement. Middle of the road on price and timeline.

Who's sourcing the images?

Same fork:

• Client provides everything. Their own photography, brand assets, headshots, event photos. Works great when they have a real archive. Falls apart fast if they don't.
• You source everything. Stock photography from Adobe Stock, Unsplash, Pexels (see Chapter 06). You handle licensing. Adds time and possibly cost (if you're using paid stock). Make sure your contract covers this.
• Hybrid: client provides what they have, you source the rest. Most common. They give you founder photos and event shots; you fill the gaps with stock for hero images and placeholder content.

The intake form covered in Chapter 01 includes questions on both of these — but the answer to "who's writing what" needs an explicit conversation, not just a checkbox. People underestimate how long writing copy takes.

And price accordingly

Pricing varies wildly per designer, region, and experience level — there's no universal number. But the principle is universal: the more work you have to do, the more you should charge.

If the client is providing finished copy, all photography, a complete brand guide, and a clear sitemap, your job is mostly assembly. Price it as a smaller engagement.

If you're also writing the copy, sourcing images, developing the brand, designing a logo, and figuring out the strategy — that's a much bigger project. Price it accordingly. A site built from a finished brand and ready content is not the same job as a site built from a blank slate, and your price should reflect that.

This conversation happens after the ownership decisions above and before you sign anything. Once both sides agree on who's doing what, the price falls out of that scope naturally.

How to build the content matrix

Once ownership is clear, you can fill out the matrix. Per page:

• Goal — what action do you want the visitor to take after reading? Donate? Book a call? Read another page? One primary goal per page.
• Primary CTA — the one button that gets the most visual weight. Aligned to the goal.
• Must-have sections — the rough block list. "Hero with headline + CTA." "Three-column services preview." "Testimonial." "Footer with newsletter."
• Content the client owes you — bios, headshots, photos, copy, stats, links to Stripe, etc. Only put items here that the client actually agreed to provide. Items you're sourcing or writing yourself don't go in this column — they go in your own task list.

The content matrix is what unblocks the build. When you sit down with Claude and say "build the About page," you paste the row for About and now Claude knows exactly what goes on it.

Common mistakes

• Multiple primary CTAs per page. Pick one. Visitors choose with their attention; if you don't choose for them, they leave.
• Pages with no clear goal. "About" can't just mean "stuff about the org." It needs a goal — usually trust-building so they donate / book / buy.
• Building before content is gathered. Lorem ipsum lies. Real content is always longer, weirder, and harder to lay out than placeholder text.
• Too many pages. Five great pages beat ten mediocre ones.

A simple sitemap template

This is a small service business example. The names in parens are how the same page maps to a nonprofit, a coach, or a similar context — substitute as needed.

A simple content matrix template

Same small service business, three example pages filled in. Build out one row per page on your sitemap.

Page	Goal	Primary CTA	Must-have sections	Client owes
Home	Book a call	Book a Call	Hero, services preview, social proof, about teaser, CTA	3 hero photos, services copy, 2 testimonials
About	Build trust → book	Book a Call	Story, what makes us different, team teaser, values	Origin story copy, 1 photo, values statement
Services	Convert browsers → bookers	Book a Call	Service grid, pricing summary, FAQ, CTA	Service descriptions, pricing tiers, FAQ list

What's next

You have a sitemap, a content matrix, and a clear plan for what every page is. Next chapter: the visual research phase — where you go gather inspiration so the design choices have real reference material instead of vibes-from-nowhere.