Your website design is the first impression people get from your business. It’s your business card and sales pitch – all rolled into one! And we all know that first impressions count. And this first impression is made in a mere 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds)!
Therefore, when creating a website for your business, you need to ensure that your web design reflects your business and communicates effectively who you are as a brand and what you offer. And it must do all of that in a simple glance.
As a professional website design agency in Perth, we break down the steps in a web page design process and why it matters to keep this in mind when choosing the best agency for you.
Importance of a Good Website for a Business
First things first: what are the benefits of a good website design? Well, it can either make or break you. According to Web Credibility Research by Stanford University, users use your website to verify your business. If it has any spelling errors, unprofessional design, or out of date content on your website, they will judge your brand accordingly. That means they’ll leave your site and more than likely decide not to do business with you!
Although all the different elements, from the look-and-feel down to the functionality, are essential, the most critical is that they align with your company values and overall business and marketing strategy.
What Makes a Great Website?
- User-friendly
- SEO-focused
- Quality content
- Responsive
- Mobile website design
- Secure and protected
- High performance and fast loading
- Good hosting
How to Design a Website in a Nutshell
Stage 1: Research and Discovery
When you plan on building a website, it’s essential to understand what you’re trying to achieve and the image and message you would like to put out there before you start.
To do this, your web design agency should ask you several questions, such as:
- Who’s your target market?
- What action do you want them to take on the website?
- What’s the website’s primary purpose for your business?
- Do you know any competitor’s whose websites you like?
From your answers to these questions and others, the agency will generally develop audience personas, a brief, spy on some of your competitors to get insight into what they’re doing, etc.
Why it Matters
Although it might be tempting to skip phases such as this, it’s a bad idea! This stage is crucial in determining your direction. And if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Stage 2: Current Website Audit
Before you go through the website design process, your web design agency will first want to audit your current website.
Why it Matters
This is another vital stage in the process as it will help determine what you’re doing wrong or what you’re already going right. This way, you won’t waste time or money on areas that are already working well.
Stage 3: Site Map and Wireframe Creation
How many pages will you need? What will the user experience of your website be? These are all things that need to be fleshed out before you can fill in the details.
Why it Matters
To understand the project’s scope, you need to have a clear idea of how many pages your website will be and how it will flow.
Stage 4: Plan of Action and Cost Outline
Now that you know your purpose with the website, you need to determine how you’ll get there. Your agency will break up the end product into different projects with respective timelines. Then they will provide you with a cost outline to approve.
Why it Matters
This stage helps you stay on track with your end goal, manage and meet different deadlines. It also enables you to get an idea of the scope of the project and budget accordingly.
Stage 5: Web Design Concepts
Before you work on anything, you want to get a colour palette and overall look and feel. You might have this already, but you need to discuss how to use it to serve your website’s purpose effectively.
Why it Matters
As mentioned before, your website is the face of your brand. You, therefore, want to ensure that there’s consistency across all your brand assets, including your website.
Stage 6: SEO and Content Creation
Content is the lifeblood of any website. Pair it with intelligent SEO, and you’ve got a powerful combination. A good content writer will be able to summarise your business’s goal, create a desire for them to buy your products or services, and finally entice customers to act.
Your web agency will also get an SEO specialist to research keywords relevant to your business and industry and work with the content writer to get your website ranking on Google.
Why it Matters
Content is vitally important to your website, and you might go through a couple of versions before you get it just right. On the other hand, search Engine Optimisation (SEO) helps put this content on the first page of Google.
Stage 7: Website Design and Development
Now that you’ve got the flesh of the website, you need to put it onto the skeleton, bringing it all together into one responsive, user-friendly website. WordPress is a very popular choice as it’s incredibly user-friendly and easy to update.
Why it Matters
This is when everything comes together and will finally give you something to look at holistically.
Stage 8: Testing and Quality Assurance
Now that you’re happy with the overall website, your web agency will run several tests to check for any bugs or issues.
Why it Matters
It’s important to thoroughly test your website before going live and putting it in front of your customers. A poor website experience is harmful to your brand.
Stage 9: Post-Launch Nurturing
Your site is live and looking great! However, you can’t just abandon it and hope to get results. You should now develop an ongoing digital and content marketing strategy, ensuring that you keep your website fresh and ranking on Google. It’s also a good idea to keep an eye on your website analytics to pinpoint any user experience issues.
Why it Matters
Website visitors will discount your business if you only have old blog posts or outdated information. An ongoing SEO blog strategy will help keep your website fresh and ranking on Google.
Bespoke Website Design: Invicta, Masters of Growth
When choosing a web design agency for a website redesign or a brand-new website for your business, you must ensure that they don’t skip over any of the crucial steps above.
As a strategic web design agency, we’re well-versed in creating beautiful, functional websites that perform well to help your customers find you and give you the results you want.
Contact us for our website design services, and let’s get your new website running in no time.
