In the digital world, your website is often your client’s first impression of not only your offers, but you and your business as a whole. The difference between an exceptional user experience and a frustrating encounter often boils down to strategic design choices. It’s not just about aesthetics, it’s about answering crucial questions that pave the way for an effective online presence.
In this blog post, we’ll explore a set of fundamental questions that will guide you in crafting a website that captivates your audience, achieves your goals, and sets you apart from the competition. Embrace the power of strategic website design, and watch your online venture flourish like never before. Let’s get started!
Why do I need a website?
Websites are a 24/7 advertisement and engagement opportunity that require very minimal upkeep. Websites allow you to establish a strong online presence, engage with a broader audience, and achieve specific objectives such as promoting a business, sharing information, or showcasing creative work.
Before beginning on the design of your website, ask yourself these 9 Questions:
“What are the primary goals of my website?”
Every website has a purpose, including yours. What are you building a website for? Are you trying to sell something? Are you creating a hub of like-minded people to share thoughts and feelings on certain topics? How about both?
Whatever it is you plan to use your website for, should be the one of the first questions you ask yourself when thinking about creating a website. For eCommerce, it’s good to leave plenty of room for your products, their names and descriptions, as well as images to show them off in the previews. For service-based websites, it’s important to have plenty of space to talk about your offers and the transformations they will provide along with providing social proof/testimonials for your potential clients.
“Who is my target audience?”
Understanding your audience is the key to having a successful website and business. If you try talking to everyone, you won’t resonate with anyone. Narrow in on a specific audience segment you want to serve. You can create this niche based on demographics or based on the needs you will be fulfilling.
Ask yourself, “Who is my brand for?” and “Is my brand targeted toward men, women, or a more broad audience?” I work with a lot of female-owned businesses such as medspas, fitness coaches, therapists, food nutritionists, and more that are targeted primarily toward women between the ages of 25-40. While I have narrowed down my audience using these demographics, I have more heavily niched down this group by their needs. I work with service-based business owners who need a new website delivered on a tight timeline. Our Design Days are an excellent option to fulfill their needs. If you want more information on our Design Days, you can view them here.
“What’s my style?”
No two brands are the same… on purpose. Your brand needs to have unique features to help you stand out from the rest. What’s your distinctive style? It can be anything ranging from color palettes, fonts, shapes, and more. What is it that makes your brand stand out visually from others? Your style is going to speak to the client more than any words on the screen. Having a basic style is completely fine, but a more unique or niche style will attract more curious eyes. If your style is more elaborate, energetic, and bright, make sure your website and graphics aren’t too busy. It can overwhelm your visitors as a result.
“What content will be featured on my pages?”
It’s always a good idea to map out the content on your website pages with pen and paper before you start to actually build it on a computer. This helps you ensure that you don’t miss anything important. Drawing your website out on a piece of paper also helps you create an overall more balanced look to your site, because you will be able to visually see when one side starts looking “heavier”.
How will you track website performance?
Once you have your strategically designed website up and ready to go, you want to be able to track its success and find areas for improvement. To do this, you can set up analytics tools to monitor website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates. Some of my favorite tools for this are Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Hotjar.
Google Analytics lets you see what pages people are visiting most, how long they are staying there, and what devices they are using to access your site, along with many other metrics.
Google Search Console is great to use if you are wanting your website to rank higher on Google. The Search Console shows you what people are searching for to land on your site, and what websites are sending you the most traffic. Knowing this information can help you optimize your landing pages for the visitors coming to your site, and help you improve your keywords to rank even higher.
Hotjar is my absolute favorite website performance tool. It lets you watch actual screen recordings from people who have visited your site. You are able to see what areas are busiest on your site and what areas you can optimize to reduce sticky points. It’s a really interesting tool.
If you want more guidance on crafting a Strategically-Designed website, use the link below to download our Free Strategic Website Design Planner. It helps you walk through the questions above and more to make sure you are fully prepared going into your website design, and will be building a website that actually increases your revenue.
https://view.flodesk.com/pages/64247dbcce6085fb867fcb00
