What to Consider Before Designing a Website

From functionality and appearance to navigation and coding integrity, a lot goes into creating an eye-catching, user-friendly website.

Design begins with understanding the essence of your brand, key audiences, and user needs in order to provide users with information quickly and easily.

While there are a lot more nitty gritty details involved with designing a website, we are sharing and highlighting the latest 2017 insights and trends for designing a better website:

Purpose driven

Are you trying to inform users or drive sales for a specific product/service? A business’s design, navigation, and content should be motivated by understanding why the site should exist. Having a strategy laid out and mapping out all your needs/wants for the website, who you’re marketing to, and what the company’s goals are can aid in how users will interact with the site. By having your purpose identified, it can also be used as a tool throughout the design process to make sure your website design is staying purpose driven.

Understand who your audience is

After writing down your business’s strategy and purpose, it is important to consider how the business will connect with its consumers. How website content is written or designed is dependent on the type of user the business is targeting. Akin to advertising, you wouldn’t market a product to a baby boomer consumer as you would a millennial consumer. To make a lasting impression, businesses should engage their audience by sending a clear message of what the company and brand is all about by interacting with each audience at their level.

Make your site mobile-friendly

In 2016, more than half of the internet browsing users came from a mobile device. Mobile devices are continuing to climb year after year, meaning more users are searching and buying products/services while on the go. Businesses that do not have a mobile-friendly site run the risk of losing a significant chunk of their audience due to lack of readability. Google has also taken this into consideration with their newest algorithm by lowering sites’ search rankings and results.

Be creative and flexible

One thing is always consistent in the web world: it is forever changing. Don’t be afraid to do something different from your competitors. Websites and the internet are based on relevancy; they’re not something you do once and never look at again. Your website is a marketing tool and should be treated as such. It is something that is used to interact with audiences and update based on the feedback you receive in order to encourage new traffic and impressions.

Our MG Process:

We have a unique process that allows businesses to analyze the market, refine the goals and content, and create a website that works for them and their audience. Before we jump into designing or developing a website, we have a multi-step process that includes:

• Benchmarking and Analysis – We immerse ourselves within your industry by understanding what your competitors are doing and leveraging the best ideas. We analyze your strengths and challenges, competitors, possible opportunities, and the needs of your users.
• Analytics and Metrics Review – We examine your current traffic and statistics associated with your website to better understand where most traffic is coming from, user interactions and preferences, and where users are getting stuck. This is also used to help determine the best approach for your audience’s user experience.
• Audience/Message/Action (AMA) – This MG-developed method helps our clients distill the most important target audiences, key messages for each audience, and desired actions they wish users to take upon visiting the website.

From there, we create a sitemap to define content hierarchy, outline core screens and architect wireframes (layouts) to plan out how the pages will be organized and present information.

Our design team then uses this information in the creative process to provide our clients with design prototypes that demonstrate the look, feel, and functionality of the website.

From small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, we can help you deliver a meaningful digital experience to your consumers. Shoot us an email at inquiry@mediaG.com or call at: 248.687.7888.