Part 3: Designing to Meet Your Goals
In part 2, we talked about defining specific goals that you want your website to achieve. The goals need to align both with what you want to sell and what your potential customers are seeking.
Once you have a list of the actual goals you want your website to achieve, then it’s time to talk about how to get them done. If your goal is to get more people contacting you about specific services, then consider putting forms on every service or product page so that the visitor has quick and easy access. Remove any barriers that might cause someone to not be able to reach you.
Mention the top services or products that you want to offer on the home page and make sure they also have a full page of their own so that you can elaborate about why your company is the best choice for these services or products.
Creating web pages is just like old-school sales: talk features, show benefits. You’re always answering the visitor’s question, “Why you?” Keep that in mind when creating your website’s content. Why is your company the best choice for this service or product?
Based on your website data gathering, decide if there are pages that are just taking up space and consider removing them or replacing them with more compelling content. Create an outline for the flow of your new website and make sure that visitors will be able to move easily through the site without getting lost. Your web designer will use this outline like a blueprint to build your site.
Your designer will want to brand your website to match your company brand – company colors, typography, etc. If you don’t already have a “brand” with specific colors and overall look, the designer can create one for you. That new design can then carry over to your business cards, stationary, brochures, data sheets, etc. Having a brand gives your company some recognition with customers, they recognize your logo and overall look over time.
Your website must be able to adjust to various devices. Some people think that if their website looks exactly the same on a desktop as it does on their phone, that’s a good thing. It’s not. A responsive website, which Google prefers, rearranges content to fit on a screen so that it looks different on a phone than a desktop, but it’s also easier to navigate and read the content.
Your designer would be happy to show you your new website on various devices and explain why it looks the way it does. Please don’t force him or her into using techniques that will not adjust properly on mobile.
Your designer will make suggestions to you about some ways to best illustrate your capabilities: video, images, info graphics, etc. if they are appropriate for your goals.
Your designer will also want to know if there is anything that you can offer your website visitors that is valuable and might make them want to keep coming back. Examples of this would be: online calculator for actuators, calculating BTU, metric conversion, product selector/configurator, online upload for CAD quotes, etc. Things that would be valuable to your customers and make them want to bookmark your website.
Making your website a desirable “destination” is the first step in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which we are going to discuss in part 4.