What to Consider When Planning a Website Design

You may be thinking that designing a website is easy, but we can tell you from experience that it’s no mean feat. Whether you choose to update or redesign your current website, or even to build a new website from scratch, there’s far more to the planning of a website than you may realize.

We get asked this question a lot; “What do I need to consider when planning my website?” So, let’s answer this question with our list of things you need to consider to build a website that is going to succeed for your business.

You can discuss these points and more with a specialist web design consultation.

The purpose of your website

First and foremost, think about what you want your website to achieve. It will, of course, relate to your business or organization’s activity. For example, a school or college is to provide information about their educational courses and facilities for children and young adults. The principal purpose of the site will, in the end, be a dominant factor in how it is designed and the content.

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Your target audience

Who is your target audience? Yes, it’s tempting to try to reach as many people as possible, but who is your main target? Who’s your ideal customer? It’s almost impossible to reach everyone, and to be honest, we’d be hard-pushed to design a website to achieve that. But a web designers in melbourne can design a website that will reach everyone in your target audience. So, think about your product or service and the people that would be attracted to buy it. Then determine your primary and secondary target audiences. Once you have these in place, it’s easier to design a website around them and achieve your objectives. For example, if your business is in a niche industry, like tree care, you might benefit from working with a specialist in tree service websites design to ensure your site speaks directly to your audience.

A design that’s responsive and mobile-friendly

These two aspects go hand-in-hand; your website needs to be able to adjust automatically to the right page viewing size no matter what device it is being viewed on. Did you know that nearly 60% of all web traffic is generated via mobile devices? That’s staggering, and this figure is only going to increase. So, it’s important to consider page size, image size and layout, CTA placement, and content to ensure that your web pages are fully mobile optimized. In this case, UI refers to the interface being viewed, this is vital to get right for a range of viewing devices to broaden your viewer base, the feel and response “feel” of the site is referred to as UX. If you were to brief any competent website development company in Denver or elsewhere more relevant, they will have an intimate understanding of how to optimize a website in both of these aspects. This may be a sensible decision as they can fine tune ill designed parts of the site that you didn’t have any idea weren’t quite right on a specific mobile platform for instance. 

Content that is engaging, fresh, and updated

As much as the design of your website can attract or turn people off, so can your content. Let’s take you to a physical shop window. They are changed and updated every week with new and in-season products to attract people to their stores. Well, your website is no different. One of the biggest mistakes people make is to add reams of content in large blocks, but when people only read 20-28% of the text on a web page, it’s time to think outside the box. Keep to short, easy-to-read, clear sentences in smaller blocks. Explain with photos, diagrams, or multimedia, such as videos. Don’t overfill a page with content – a bit of white space is actually a good thing. Make sure your content is relevant, up-to-date, and fresh – people love reading new content each time they visit your site; in fact, they’ll start visiting your site on purpose just to read it!

Integrated features

Another important factor to consider is the integrated features you want to appear on your websites, such as your social buttons and how they integrate with the platforms, any videos or podcasts you want to be embedded, online forms (contact forms, registration forms), CTA buttons and any other gadgets you’d like. Don’t leave them to the end and think, oh, I’d like that included, too, or it could mean having to undo what’s already been done to accommodate it.

When it comes to redesigning or building a website, the more you can plan before your designer gets to work, the better the outcome.

Image Source: Freepik