Today, building a website requires developing a solid web design strategy. It’s not just about giving your site an eye-catching aesthetic, but it should also be focused on creating an interface that communicates function and provides easy access to its content.
When you’re simply implementing a look and feel that’s trendy at the moment without considering their functionality or the purpose behind it, you’re likely setting your website up for failure.
No matter how fantastic your site looks, your visitors won’t stick around for more than three minutes if it’s slow, ineffective, and confusing to navigate. They’ll leave and go elsewhere. What’s more, it should come with an interface that will help you accomplish your business goals.
That’s why you should take the time to create a web design strategy that involves all of these elements.
Good thing you’ve found this post. Here, you’ll learn everything there is to learn about mapping out an intuitive web design plan that will impress your visitors and search engine bots alike.
Sounds exciting? Let’s get started then!
- Identify Your Goals
As with any marketing strategy, your first move is to establish your goals.
What do you aim to achieve with the new website or redesign? What is its primary purpose? Do you want to make it more responsive? Reduce the bounce rate? Or perhaps, are you planning to rebrand?
Keep in mind that a website isn’t an art piece – it’s an interface that serves a function. Whether its function is to deliver informational content, to entertain, or to sell products, your design should be able to fulfill it.
- Think About Your Brand Image
Many web designers often make the mistake of implementing the latest design trends without bothering to think about the type of image they should be conveying to their audience.
Gradients, pop-ups, and animated buttons may work for some brands, but they might not be essential for yours. Your web design should align with the personality of your brand.
Think about your trademark colors, the emotions you wish to elicit, and the overall feel you hope to attain. You want your website to leave a remarkable impression on your visitors. You want it to embody who you are as a brand.
Rainforest Guardians, an organization that seeks to raise awareness on deforestation, does an incredible job designing its website. Not only is the theme on point with their brand, but the site places interactivity at the center of its user experience, considering that their goal is to encourage visitors to take part in their cause.
- Focus on Your Audience
Before you begin working on your design, understand who your target audience is first.
Remember, demographics can influence your design. Factors like gender, age, profession, and technical competency may dictate how your website should appear.
Knowing your ideal audience inside out doesn’t only determine the general aesthetic of your website, but it also makes it easier to create a web design strategy that provides all the information they’re searching for.
For instance, if you’re catering to business people, you should set up your site in a way that looks formal, which means putting more emphasis on educational content rather than visual elements.
- Study Your Competition
Analyzing your competitors’ websites can help you finalize your plan.
What makes their website stand out? What are they doing to keep their audience engaged? What are their flaws and drawbacks, and how can you compensate for them?
Aside from getting inspiration on what you should and shouldn’t do in web design, studying your competitors will give you a better insight into your customers’ expectations.
For all we know, they might be selling the same item at a lower price or offering certain services without charging extra fees. This in turn can lead you to make a few changes for a better experience, like maybe lowering your product price.
- Implement Your Design
Now that you’ve established the purpose of your site, listed down your goals researched your audience and competition, and identified your brand image, it’s time to start designing.
Let’s say your primary goal is to grow your email list. How can your web design help reach such a goal? Here are three things you can do:
- Use color and contrast to make the CTA or link easily noticeable.
- Eliminate unnecessary and optional elements in your fill up form.
- Make the “About” snippet on your landing page as clear as possible.
It’s important to note that although your goals may vary, the strategy remains the same, and that is to shape and focus all your design elements towards meeting those goals.
For a website centered on information consumption, the web designer should concentrate on usability and readability. On the other hand, an ideal entertainment site is one with lots of attractive colors and visuals.
- Measure Your Success
Think you can finally close your web design project as soon as you’ve launched your website? Think again.
You’ll need to monitor it so you’ll know whether your strategy is a hit or miss.
If your goal is to increase the number of blog subscribers, check your RSS stats. If you redesigned your site for the sake of getting more people to sign up for your service, measure it and see if your changes are bringing a positive impact.
It doesn’t really matter how in-depth your analytics are at this stage. As long as you have some way of measuring your key objectives, you’ll be able to see if you’re moving in the right direction with your design and identify which areas need more work.
You can use free tools like Google Analytics to get comprehensive data on the performance of your website. With it, you can track conversion funnels, see what links your visitors click on most, traffic sources, and much other information.
Final Thoughts
Your website won’t be a success without a powerful web design strategy in place. If you don’t have time to create one, you can always enlist the help of a company that specializes in website designing Miami. You can never go wrong with hiring a team of dedicated experts to get the job done!
