For many businesses, a good strong website is their calling card online. A strong website helps create a sense of brand identity and convey a brand voice to visitors of that website. Web design is something that has become increasingly accessible in recent years with many services such as Squarespace and Wix offering an out the box approach to web design.
For those looking to make a basic personal website, these tools can be great. That being said, for many companies, these website builders lack the ability to put their own unique stamp on their website. A strong web design agency with a design-first approach can do wonders for businesses looking to rebrand an existing website or for startups looking to propel their business to new heights.
Designing a new website from scratch can be a daunting prospect. There are numerous aspects of web design that are easy to overlook. Website design is a complex process that involves many different cogs to be put in place in order for a good website to succeed. These pivotal points of website creation range from small and easily overlooked things like meta and alt tags for SEO to more major aspects such as building an eCommerce store or designing a fully responsive design across all devices.
The following list of things to consider when designing a new website is not definitive but mastering each of the following points and incorporating them into your design process will help create some solid foundations for success in your website launch. In addition to learning these aspects of the creation process for your own use, this list is super useful for businesses looking to invest in a web design agency. A better understanding of each of the following points will help you to identify an agency that can deliver on the points that truly make a website a great addition to any business.
1) Branding
A companies brand is its identity, it is the face of their business, it is the logo, the style of writing, the theme, colours, and images on a website and the interactions and posts made on social media. Creating a strong company brand helps businesses to connect with customers and build something that is truly memorable and impactful for those that interact with it. When designed well a brand has a strong impact on the overall appearance of a website. The first thing most consumers will notice when visiting a website is the companies logo. A unique and memorable logo will help consumers to remember a brand and immediately conjure up an image of the kind of company they are interacting with. That initial impression created by a logo can often be the building blocks for continuing to develop a brand across a website. The colours, style, theme, and font from a strong logo can be used further and incorporated across a website to help establish the website’s style and brand. A good designer will appreciate creating consistent branding across all mediums and platforms which is why it is important to have a similar style and design across your logo, website, print media, and social media. A good designer will be able to create each individual aspect of the design process whilst retaining a consistent brand image and impression.
2) Function and features
In recent years the scope and potential for websites has increased massively, websites have transformed from simply being a static page online with key points of information to truly interactive and transformative tools for businesses and consumers alike. These added features can range massively and could be as simple as integrating a booking system or contact form into your website and can scale up to building a whole eCommerce system into a website. With each one of these things, there are multiple challenges that can be faced during the design and creation process. A good web design agency will be able to guide you through this and there are also multiple resources online to help you guide you if you decide to do it yourself. With some of these more elaborate features comes new demands on the functionality of a site so it’s extra important to pay attention to how a website performs and functions with the implementation of these features. Ensuring you have the right host for example to handle a larger eCommerce store is vitally important to the functionality of that particular feature. With good functionality and engaging features on a website businesses have the opportunity to offer unique and responsive experiences. Reach out to a good design agency that specialises in delivering functionality and good features to a website to see how this could help your business grow.
3) SEO
Search engine optimisation used to be a buzzword thrown around by a very niche group of digital marketers but SEO is now at the forefront of web design and an essential requirement for any business looking to succeed online. Search engine optimisation refers to the process of optimising your website for high ranking positions on a search engine results page such as Google or Bing. There are many different areas of SEO but during the design process on-page and technical SEO are the most important. Optimising various areas of your website while designing it can help right off the bat by making your website more favourable to search engines. One of the most important things for SEO is page speed, optimising your website for speed through things like gzip compression, caching and image compression can help massively increase page speed. In addition to this designing a website that is fully responsive across all devices can be a massive help. It is no secret that Google favours websites that are fully responsive and the majority of website visitors now come from mobile so designing your website with a ‘mobile-first’ approach that works on all devices will go a long way. As well as having technical aspects of SEO down you can also do a lot of on-page optimisation when creating copy and designing the layout for your pages by ensuring relevant h1 tags, meta tags and alt tags are in place. As well as this, strong keyword orientated long-form copy can go a long way for on-page SEO. Choose an agency that understands the importance of incorporating SEO into the design process and you will be left with a website that does not only look good but performs amazingly as well.
4) Responsive
Having a responsive website is arguably the single most important aspect of web design today. In a world with so much choice and variety if a website doesn’t perform the way it is supposed to then consumers will simply go elsewhere. Creating a website that is fully responsive across PC, Tablet and Mobile is the cornerstone to good and strong contemporary website design. Many web design agencies will design their websites with a desktop-first view, which is only natural because when designing a website you often use a desktop. To get the most from your website approach your creative process with a mobile-first view, ensure your website looks great on mobile and you will be set up well for winning over your future visitors. That is not to say purely focus on mobile, it is vitally important to make sure your website looks good across all platforms so spend that extra time to tweak your design for all devices. Many website building tools will have options to display and tweak your website based on device. In addition to this CSS can also be set up on most sites using media queries to tweak the look of a website based on the device. Most agencies worth their money will now design a website that is fully responsive across all platforms, so make sure you quiz your web designers on their intention to do so and check your site during the handover period even if you don’t browse on mobile or desktop yourself.
5) Marketing
The final stage in the web design process is telling your story. Marketing or specifically digital marketing is your opportunity to showcase all the hard work you’ve put in during the design process and get your website the attention it deserves. Digital Marketing is a broad term and has many different areas to it such as SEO, Paid Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Marketing Analytics. All of these may sound daunting for those with little experience in digital marketing but you will be surprised how much you are already doing. While creating the content and optimising your website you will have already taken massive steps to optimising your website for search engine rankings. Social Media marketing is a great opportunity to share your website across different social media platforms and use things such as hashtags and community groups to reach your target demographics. Further down the line you can gather more data and make informed decisions about your marketing strategy with your website analytics gathered through tools such as Google Analytics. Finally paid advertising is a fantastic way to start getting some immediate results, Google PPC (pay per click) advertisements will push your website right to the top spot on Google for a price and similarily Facebook Ads will allow you to show your ads to a hyperfocused target audience. A good website design agency will be able to guide and mentor you in the best ways to market your new or existing website.
This list is just a starting point for honing and developing your website's design and identity. That being said getting these 5 points in place will give you a massive advantage over your competition and allow you to create a crisp, clean design that enhances your brand’s identity and allows you to reach customers. A reputable website design agency such as beHIVE is an excellent choice for incorporating all five of these points into your website.
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