Web Designing Companies Strategy

A great website doesn’t start with design. You may only see what’s on the surface — a well-designed and well-functioning website. But behind it is weeks, sometimes months, of strategic planning. But overhauling the entire look was a major undertaking. We needed a clear strategy and plan before we jumped into the design process. You would never build a house without a plan. Even before you meet with your contractors, you have an idea of what you want out of your house. The same goes for your website. Web Design Companies are Not allocating the time and resources necessary to strategically plan your website is the biggest mistake many web companies make. While these steps will vary based on your company’s needs, here’s what a well-developed tactical Web strategy should look like:

Step 1: Establish Your Goals

Before your Web design agency starts creating a website, make sure you’re clear on the basics: What are you trying to achieve with your new website? What is your website’s main purpose? Ask your key stakeholders: “What’s the biggest goal of our website?” Everyone is likely to have different answer to this question, and you’ll want to discuss all input. But you’ll need to reach a consensus so there’s one clear-cut vision. A good way to do this is through Card Storming. Let’s say you have four stakeholders. Pass out note cards to everyone, and give them three minutes to write down as many brand/business goals for the website they have, with one goal on each card. Then pair up and each team has three minutes to decide on the top three goals out of their bunch. Do that as a whole group so that, in the end, you have a consensus on the three main goals for your new website.

Step 2: Define Your Audience

Your audience will play the biggest role in your website, so you need to know everything about them. The basic demographics of age, gender and profession are good, but don’t stop there. What do your users like to do? What social networks do they use? How technically savvy are they? This user research could include focus groups, competitive analysis, surveys, interactive exercises, or existing and potential customer interviews, depending on how in-depth you choose to go.

Step 3: Set Your Brand

The last thing you want is for your website to give your audience mixed messages from a confusing brand image. How do you want customers to feel about your brand? Be sure to adequately explain that to your web designers so they can choose color schemes and other elements to best convey that emotion. Every color elicits a different emotion, so you want to settle on a scheme that properly conveys the tone of your brand.

Step 4: Content Strategy

The wording and style of a whitepaper case study should not be identical to that of a Facebook post. Potential customers are at different phases of your conversion funnel based on where they interact with your brand. Copy across your digital presence must retain a common theme while also exhibiting versatility to take advantage of each unique digital platform.

Organic traffic from search engines is still the most effective way to generate leads for your business. Writing with SEO and highly ranked industry keywords in mind will leapfrog you over your competitors and help get your website ranking appropriately. By producing valuable content that will garner links from websites with high domain authorities, your website should see an increase in traffic volume and more qualified leads.

Step 5: Information Architecture

Without putting in the time and effort to construct a wireframe, designing a professional website for your business can be a difficult process. Similar to the layout of a brick-and-mortar retailer as you walk through the front entrance, a proper wireframe that diagrams page flow is crucial to how your website displays the products or services that it offers. You need to prioritize your products or services for easy accessibility while other less important pages can be deeper in the site’s navigation. A carefully thought out wireframe is not only for the pages on a website, but also for determining the placement of individual elements on a page.

Step 6: Promotional Activities

In order to have an effective campaign, your business must think outside the box to provide innovative ideas that lead to unique, appealing content for your customers. Predicting future industry trends by using the data you’ve collected will help to create strategies that are more relevant to your audience. With new, compelling, channels to engage your target demographic, it is also important not to lose sight of a campaign’s goals. You can’t be afraid to be distinct and unique in your campaign strategy, but once you have attracted your customers, you have to make sure to lead them towards actionable results such as an email sign-up, a free trial, or a purchase.

Step 7: Track Your Results

In the end, you want a website that looks great. But you also want one that accomplishes your goals. In order to do that, make sure you have installed an analytics tracking system so you can see just how people are using your website. Google Analytics will do just that for you. Make sure the goals you identified in Step 1 are tracked here. Your project is only as strong as the planning that goes into it. A proper strategy ensures effective design and development, and avoids costly setbacks. At the conclusion of a well-developed strategic process, not only will you have a great product, but you will also have a comprehensive blueprint document to use as a basis for future expansion. The future of your business is too important not to do it right the first time.