When it comes to Website Design – it’s vital you understand the following.
My goal here is to ensure this post equips you better for choosing the best website design company for your project.
Website Design is a bit like saying ‘cars’ in that the term ‘cars’ covers every car on the road. Now you and I both know that there is a vast difference between an Aston Martin and a Vauxhall Astra.
When it comes to website design, think of it in the same way you may consider cars. Or any other mass market product for that matter. You have premium and budget options.
The mistake that some web designers make is not outlining to you the level of effort required to ensure your web design project is a success. Many designers are happy to build a 5 page website and take your money. The web designer may think they have done a great job and you may think you’ve got what you paid for.
But it’s only after months of getting zero enquiries that you may start to question the website and indeed the designer. This is where a monthly commitment needs to be made to drive traffic.
You must have a clear objective of what you want the website to achieve for your business. What is the CTA (Call to Action), is it to call you, fill in a form for more information or purchase your product/service? You website has to have a defined user journey. Any website designer worth their salt knows this.
Understand that websites need monthly maintenance for security purposes. This includes plugin updates and security patches. Websites left unkept are vulnerable to cyber attacks . Each month, plugin developers release patches to keep their plugins up to date. You should also ask about back up plans should a website fail, how quick can you get your website back online?
Ensure you have a clearly defined contract of exactly what you are getting for your investment. Your web designer should provide you with a site map before they commence production. This will show you the number of pages and how the pages interact. You both have to know exactly what will be delivered.
Who is going to write the content? Do you have an engaging message for your business that will compel your visitors to act. Copywriting is a seperate skill to web design. Some web designers (like us) are experienced and understand writing content and copy. Some web designers focuses only on design practise. Make sure your website copy is written to drive engagement.
Web design can look easy to the untrained eye, but a professional website that performs well for your business has many moving parts. If you change your mind on content/design for whatever reason after signing off the original project scope, understand that this can delay your project and will mean an increase in budget if not agreed at the outset.
We know from experience that seeing a website in the production phase can inspire new ideas. These new ideas can feel exciting at first but must be thought about with consideration before agreeing an additional plan with your web design agency.
Good web design follows established design principles from both an aesthetic and technical point of view. It’s tempting to make suggestions during the production stage as your designer shows progress.
In some cases this can help, but please be aware that any ideas have to fit within good web design principle. A good web designer will push back if they know the ideas do not fit within the design language of website development.
Driving website traffic will require some form of monthly commitment. Whether that’s an in house team or an agency, you have to have a mechanism in place to build awareness.
You need to drive traffic to your website in order to convert visitors into leads. How you drive traffic to your website will depend on who your ideal customer is and where and how they engage online.
Increasing your awareness online to drive sales and leads can be achieved through social media paid ads and/or SEO (search engine optimisation). Social media marketing is a long term game – you have to post as often as possible to get traction and drive awareness. The same applies with SEO to rank high on Google in that you need monthly monitoring to rank for the right keywords. Paid ads or cold email can reduce this time and drive leads in a much shorter timescale. If you’d like to find out more about that then get in contact with us.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) requires monthly changes. The idea here is for your website to rank on key search terms on Google to make sure you can be found on Google when clients are searching for your product/services. There are 2 types of SEO. On page SEO is having each page assigned a keyword with other key phrases (long tail keywords) included. All accompanying images must have alt tags (keywords tagged to the image) to enhance the page ranking. Offsite SEO is backlinks that point to your website. So think business listings (get listed in as many directories as you can) and social media posts. Here you can create an offer page and run ads on Facebook/Instagram to drive traffic to your website landing/offer page. Learn more about our SEO services here.
I hope this better shapes your understanding of what’s involved in the web design process. Your web design agency should be more than happy to answer any questions on the points raised here.
Peter Coleman
Professional Impact Design
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