3 Steps to map out your digital planner in a day
Have you been putting off designing your first digital product because the thought of putting together a comprehensive plan sounds like it'll take too long and be too complicated? Designing an all-new product can seem really intimidating, but by following just three steps, you can have a completely new digital planner mapped out and ready to be brought to life in just one day!
We will be sharing three steps you can take to turn your ideas into products in this blog post. We'll be talking about...
Ideation and strategy
Mapping out your planner pages
Sketching out each page
✨Need some help turning your ideas into a digital product? Read this blog post!
Start by brain dumping your ideas & create a strategy
First things first, for us to create a planner, we need to get our ideas out of our head and onto a piece of paper. It doesn't matter what your ideas are, you can write down anything that comes to mind! Start by doing a brain dump of the systems you have in place in your life. This could be everything from the method you use to clean your house to how you book appointments or how you stay on top of your social media marketing schedule if you're already a business owner.
Even the most straightforward systems could change someone's life and help them improve their productivity, so don't think that your ideas aren't good enough!
Don't worry about organizing the ideas you're writing down, just focus on getting everything into a list at this stage.
Once you have all your ideas onto a piece of paper, take some time to think about your target audience and what they're going to be looking for in a planner. Ask yourself these questions to better understand what kind of product is going to resonate best with your audience...
What are the biggest problems my audience wants to solve right now?
What solutions have they already tried?
What similar transformations are people investing in outside of the digital stationery niche?
What gaps in the market can I see and fill with my digital planner?
Now that you know the answers to these questions, use this information to create a rough draft of a strategy for your planner and decide what you want to include and how you want to structure it.
Next, it’s time to take everything you’ve braindumped and turn it into an actionable, strategic plan. The strategy for your planner will help you narrow down your ideas and pick one to focus on as the theme for your signature planner.
A signature product is going to help you build brand recognition and solve a unique problem in a memorable way. By creating a strategy for this product, you'll have an action plan that includes the problems you're solving, the systems you're teaching, and your marketing plan to catch the eye of your audience and convince your ideal customer to purchase your digital planner.
When creating a plan for your product, break things down into three different sections:
Needs – your strategy should be based on the needs of your audience. Your products should be the solutions to your target audience's problems. Creating solution-based digital planners will help you relate to their needs and sell the transformation – which is just as important (if not more!) as the features and functionality of the product you've created.
Layout – if your digital planner is built around a signature process, then you'll probably have a specific layout in mind that will guide your planner users to the solution you want them to experience. Strategize what kind of pages you want to create and how they're going to flow together in a way that makes sense for your process and the people who are going to be using your products.
Differentiators – these are the things that make your product different than anything already out there. It's important to include these things in your strategy because they're going to be the very things that convince your target audience to invest in your products. As you work through your idea and start designing, this list will get longer and longer. The more differentiators you have, the better!
Mapping out your planner pages
Once you have a strategy put together that you're confident will help you design and launch a successful digital planner, it's time to focus on the content you want to include in your product by making a list of all the specific pages you want to add.
Your list of pages can include both the necessary pages for your customers to achieve a certain result, along with the "want" pages that would just be nice to have. These pages can include things like a daily schedule, task lists, calendars, goal and habit trackers, or any other elements that you find important. Any pages that you decide are “wants” can be saved for future products or can even be sold as add-on inserts!
For example, maybe your process as a fitness lover is to track what you’re eating, plan your meals, and stick to a particular exercise program. For your planner users to also follow this process, they’ll need habit trackers, workout pages, meal plans, and so on.
The must have pages in your planner design
The “need” pages are the must-haves that your audience needs in order to reach the desired outcome of your signature process. For example, this would be the goal check-ins, exercise planners, and meal plans in a fitness-centered planner.
The nice to have pages in your planner design
The “want” pages would be nice to have in your planner but won’t make or break the outcome that your audience is trying to achieve. For example, a nice-to-have idea for a mom planner could be journal pages. Take time to think about whether this page is a need or want — we don’t want things that are going to distract or overwhelm your customers.
Sketch out each of your planner page layouts
Finally, once all your hard work is complete, you’ll start to see your planner come to life! As you sketch out each of the page layouts that you've decided are necessary for your planner, keep in mind what you want the overall layout to look like. How are the pages going to work together? Do the sections line up in a way that makes sense? Will your hyperlinking strategy make sense and be efficient?
To make sure that your pages and layouts make sense, start out by sketching with pen and paper. Start by creating rectangles to represent the pages. Then use basic shapes to represent calendars, lines, boxes, and checklists. While sketching, imagine where you want your tabs to be located in your final product.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, think of this as a rough draft!
These pages that you're sketching will serve as a guide when the time comes to digitize your pages into your signature digital planner.
Once you've completed these three steps, you're ready to start designing your planner! All it takes is just one day to take the action necessary to map out your planner and take your ideas from something in your mind to something that's changing lives.
Download a 2024 90-day planner + workbook to get started!
We want to make sure that your product is memorable and successful, so we've put together a 90-day planner that will help you to use the next three months to take inspired action that allows you to confidently launch a planner by the end of the 90 days. Download your planner copy here! Consider this a roadmap to fast-track your success as you design your product and set up your shop.
We'll also provide you with a sketching template that you can use to map out and sketch your planner page by page! Get your copy here.
