Your website is your business’ chance to make a good first impression. In many cases, your customers will interact with your website well before ever making a purchase or submitting an inquiry. To maximize your website’s effectiveness, it is critical to take a structured approach to how you design your website. The award-winning web development team at Snowball Creative Group suggests following these important three steps to craft a web design strategy that will get results.
Set Goals
A website can serve a host of different purposes. Understanding the goals you want to achieve with your website will help determine what functionalities and components you need for your new site. For example, a roofing contractor may design their website to be informational, providing their key benefits, services and costs for various projects. However, customers would still need to contact the contractor directly to schedule appointments or submit payments. On the other hand, a book reseller may have a more e-commerce designed site where customers can browse available products, pay for them and handle all of their transactions through the website. Whether you have service- or product-based business, identifying the purpose and goals of your website early in the process is key in making sure your final website is positioned well to meet your business goals.
Research
With over a billion active websites on the Internet, you have many examples to review and pull from. At Snowball Creative Group, we encourage our clients to evaluate 3-5 competitor websites and also explore other websites that meet their intended goals. This way the web design strategy that is created will be in line with industry standards and will have the necessary components built in to ensure that the final product is as optimized as possible. By exploring other websites, you get a firm understanding of the types of interactions and website navigation options your target customer may be used to. Having this “insider” perspective can be valuable in helping you craft your own business website to meet, if not exceed, the quality and usability of current websites in your market area.
Prototype Solutions
Now, having your website goals in mind coupled with your research of the industry, you can begin to create your business website. During this step you may select a qualified website designer to partner with you in designing initial prototypes of the website. Whenever possible, you should always have prototypes created first before committing to any particular website design. This way you are able to see beforehand how your web content will look and how your customers will view it when they visit your site. By investing the time to craft a comprehensive website design strategy you ensure that your finished website will both meet your business needs and will be positioned well to attract and engage new customers.
Your business website is one of the most important elements of establishing your brand. Therefore, taking a formulaic and structured approach to how you design and implement your new website could mean the difference between customers loving your site and customers avoiding it at all costs. If you have an existing site or are looking to create a new one for your business, give our web development team a call today at 404.678.0338 to start crafting your business’ website design strategy.
