The process to creating and designing quality websites
Website designers play a crucial role in bringing the vision of a business’s branding to life online. Your website is your connection to the outside world and must visually represent your business in the best light possible. When making the decision to build or refresh your website, the most important factors to consider are how the website will engage with your audience, how it represents your business and how it delivers your products and services. When working with a website designer, the first step is to communicate your business ideas, goals and values so that your designer has a clear representation of the message you are wanting to display.
Planning your website design
In the initial stages of website design, planning plays an important role in conceptualising how your new website will be presented online. It’s best to sit down with your website designer and talk in depth about your current business operations, your branding, visions and ideas for the new website. An expert website designer will be able to take the ideas from you and discuss options of how the relevant messages will be portrayed through design and layout.
There are millions of different websites online, so it’s also important to look and research comparable businesses in your specific industry and see how they portray themselves as well. This research enables your website designer to set the industry benchmark for where current competitors rank and then plan to essentially ‘outdo’ them with the design of your website. From a technical standpoint, website designs should be based on current industry trends and procedures, but more importantly should be reflective of the ideas and values of the business.
Working with your branding to create a design concept
Branding is the process of creating a visual identity for a place or business. It’s essentially how your customers identify with you through the use of specific values, concepts and design. While most people assume that having a logo is all you need for branding, and truth be told, it is an important component of your branding, it’s not the whole package. Branding is made up of much more than that. It represents your whole business through visual cues such as logos, colours and shapes as well as feeling association with specific words and phrases. Having an established branding identity is very important to creating a solid website design. If you don’t have a clear brand, it is important to establish this first before commencing with your website design.
Your website designer may be equipped with the skills to create your business brand alongside your website. If they don’t, then its best to delay starting your website until you have worked with a marketing organisation or graphic design expert to clearly create your brand.
Creating your homepage
If your branding is already established, then its full steam ahead for your website design. Your designer will create an initial concept layout based on your meeting notes, ideas and comments. The homepage, or landing page, as it is sometimes referred to as, represent snippets of your business and gives customers a broad overview of what your business is about. It is the first page that they see when they land on your website so it needs to be clear and concise in its construction.
A basic wireframe for a homepage will include:
- Your logo at the top of the website, so that customers know exactly the business that they are looking at
- A visual call to action that grabs the attention of the user. The call to action could be a statement, tagline, image or graphic that represents your business in one screen
- A section detailing important information about your business which gives customers an insight into who you are
- Your products and services displayed prominently on the site. This is the reason why people are visiting your site so it needs to be clear and straightforward for the user
- Latest news, projects or blogs displayed gives customers updated information about your industry and recent happenings of the business
- Testimonials and reviews from previous customers provides potential customers with advice and information without having to research beyond your homepage. It allows you to build trust and rapport with users even before the first interaction
- Your contact information available for potential customers to get in touch with you
Your homepage design should be visually appealing and utilise the colours and shapes within your branding model. There are an endless number of opportunities to use different design elements to display different types of information. Feel to go back and forth with your designer until you are completely satisfied with the way that your website looks and feels.
Creating supplementary pages
After you have approved your initial homepage design, your website designer will get to work on making the supplementary/internal pages within your website. These are the pages that generally go into more detail about your business and your product and service offering. They will be visually appealing and a quality website designer will ensure that the design will be cohesive across all pages of the website, in line with your agreed homepage design. Depending on the number of pages that need to be created, this generally is the most time-consuming part of the website design process.
Implementing content throughout your website design
Content plays an important role in representing your website in the written form. Visually, a website designer will need to create a design that cohesively displays your website copy in an appealing and interesting way. There is nothing worse than having slabs of website copy on a page that is not appealing and users aren’t going to read. This can come down to utilising different fonts and styling for headings vs paragraph text, creating visual representations of content with images and icons, or creating animations to enhance and grab the attention of the user, engaging with them, leading them to read the content.
The importance of content for Google rankings
Content also is responsible for helping your website rank within Google’s search engine. Your content needs to be considered ‘helpful’ in order for google to give it a positive ranking. This means that your content should be informative and provide your customers with solid explanations to their search queries. As important as it is to be visually appealing, the actual words that make up your content for your website design are crucial and need to be considered in the design process. Employing a professional copywriter to produce website copy for your new website can be beneficial, as it can be tailored to your business, written with your businesses unique tone, and proposition and properly keyworded for Google to essentially make your website rank better once it is crawled.
Reviewing your website design
The design of your new website wouldn’t be complete without a full review with your website designer, to finalise any changes or edits required before launching the site. Your website designer should be responsive to your feedback and take on board your recommendations for changes in line with industry trends and ideas.
Responsiveness checks
Part of the review process is also having your website checked for responsiveness and compatibility. Any reputable website designer will always consider device responsiveness when building a website. This includes optimising the experience for the user to ensure that no matter which device your user is viewing from, whether it be computer, tablet or phone, the user experience is positive.
What’s next?
The design process for your new website may be complete and it is time to launch, however a website is never truly finished. You might ask yourself, ‘what do I do now?’. There are many steps that you can take to better enhance your website’s performance, improve your search engine rankings and build your branding bigger. The world is full of endless opportunities for your business.
Choosing a trusted website designer for your next project
If you need the support of a trusted website designer, look no further than Jezweb. With 20 years of experience and multiple industry awards, we understand your business and can cater your website design to suit your needs. Reach out to us on 1300 024 766 or make an enquiry online today.