WEBSITE DESIGN

Websites are one of the many digital marketing channels an organization uses to engage with it’s audiences. However, your website is the center of your digital universe and is the destination all other digital marketing channels point to. Your website needs to represent your business accurately and position you for success. In the world of web design there are many who claim all sorts of skills and abilities. Encountering a web designer who is the whole ball of wax – the total package – is a rare occurence. Much of today’s technology options can gives any one with the ability to access the internet the ability to build a website using simple and easy tools. However, a website is simply not a handful of web pages linked together with menus. There’s much more behind the design of a website than the technical ability to create pages. On this page I will explain why.

Planning & Strategy
Just as in anything, it is extremely important to be well prepared to begin building your website. Remember, your website is simply a vehicle for you to communicate. Knowing what it is you want to say is extremely important otherwise you will create pages that are not meaningful. Consider your website to be the billboard your brand will be seen on online.

1. What is the purpose for your website? Do you want it to be simply informational or do you want your visitors to take action when they visit (join my mail list, donate, download, etc.)?
2. Who are you speaking to? Characterize the audience you want to connect with through your website.
3. Who is your competition? How many others offer the services your organization does?
4. How can you “position” your organization differently than others who may offer similar services?

As you can see these have nothing to do with building a web page. Planning and strategy are also important when considering the functional aspects of your website, not just marketing and sales. For instance, will your website make use of a searchable database? Will it display video and audio? Will it make use of 3rd party apps or plugins to give it special functionality?

It’s important to consider the bigger, long term picture when planning for your website so it can accommodate your organization when it begins to grow. Talk to stakeholders. Talk to users. Understand what the ideal experience should be before starting to design it.

User Experience
Designing an ideal user experience will take some projection on the part of your designer. In order to build a site experience for your intended audience you need to put yourself into the mindset of a user and consider why you’re there and what the ideal scenario would be. Until you can do this you’re designs will be either satisfying the wrong audience or best guesses that could be way off the mark.

Branding the Website
Your website should be unique. It should be different than others who offer services similar to yours. Your brand is made up of many things when you’re considering it as your website…

1. Your domain – make it simple and easy to recall.
2. Your domain extends to other online manifestations – your email address, your social media platforms, etc.
3. The prominent display of your logotype.
4. The color palette of your landing and interior pages.
5. The font you select.
6. The imagery you use.
7. The way your copy reads.

Registering Your Domain
Your domain name should be registered along with any other closely associated domains that might come up in searches. You want to own those and you want them to point to your domain as well.

Hosting Your Website
Where your site resides can have an impact on the type of service you require when problems occur. You want to partner with a reputable host who has a great tech support staff.

Your Site Map
A site map is simply the organization chart for your website. The site map is also a great navigational tool if your site visitor is unable to find what they are looking for through conventional means. Creating this hierarchical view of your website allows you to group and categorize, helping users find information by logically sorting it into like pages. A site map also helps plan for the content that will occupy each of those different pages in the site map.

Wire Frame Design
Some designers have different names for this function, but what I mean when I refer to the wire frame is a page schematic that places each page element and considers layout and navigation. Creating a wire frame helps prioritize elements.

Template/Theme
The overarching theme your website will take on and receive customization is in part based upon what you want the website to do for you. Themes can be customized to take on the look and feel of your branding. This theme will be the foundation for your website’s pages as we begin the page design/creation process.

Content Creation
By referencing the site map we can begin to create each page of the website using the themed wire frame design to layout each page. Content must be optimized to enable pages to load quickly.

SEO
There are ways in which we can ensure your web pages are found when searched by engines like Google. Keywords and phrases are key in integrating into page content as well as into the site elements.

Testing
Most platforms are now designed to be cross-browser compatible as well as cross-platform compatible. The only wild card that still causes developers headaches remains Microsoft Internet Explorer. It is our aim to ensure the user experience is consistent no matter whether you’re a Mac or Windows user on Safari or Chrome or on an Android or iPad. Web design has advanced to the point where 99 times out of a 100 the user experience is what you intended it to be.

Launch
When a new site goes live it may mean an old site goes dark. In instances like this we can setup redirects from URL’s on the old site to land on the new website pages.