Step-by-Step Web Designing Strategy

Even a site is already established, there are a number of basic steps that are needed to be questioned to ensure you are heading right to your main goal. The answers to these questions will form the basis for your web design strategy.

1) Firstly, what is the purpose of your site? Is it a marketing tool, a shopping cart to enable online sales, or both? What are your main objectives?
2) Secondly, what are your strengths and weaknesses? If you were in your visitor's "shoes", would you buy from the site and what would make you return?
3) Thirdly, how is your income going to be generated? Will it be from advertising, from site membership fees, from affiliate programs, or from selling your own product? What are your capabilities and how will you use them to maintain a competitive advantage over your rivals?

1) THE PURPOSE OF YOUR SITE

What is the purpose of your site? Why does it site exist? Supporting documents can explain the goals in more detail, but for your web design strategy keep it strategic and high-level.

Your main objectives must therefore must be:

1) Clear focused and specific
2) Measurable
3) Feasible and suitable for the niche you are focusing on.

2) IN YOUR VISITOR'S SHOES

Always put yourself in your website visitor's "shoes". If you were the website visitor, what would keep you on the site? What makes your site sticky? By doing this you can easily identify your strengths and weaknesses! The more focused your site it, the more likely you are to satisfy your visitors’ requirements, and the more likely they are to return and use your site in future. The layout and navigation of your web pages are going to affect the usability of your site. It is very important to get this right and to know which web technologies to use. Your website layout and navigation can make or break your site. Even more important is your Content strategy because you need to provide content that is likely to be targeted at your visitors. Are you providing the content your visitors are looking for?

3) TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE

If you are like most organizations then you are no stranger to the need to know who your site is for. Think about the profile of who comes to your site today and who you want to attract in the future. You can get valuable insights into your audience when you examine the data of your Web analytics tool to see where most visitors go, and what they are searching for.

4) HOW YOUR INCOME IS GENERATED

Informational sites usually generate their revenue from advertising, commissions, membership fees, from affiliate programs and making sales to their members or subscribers using off-the-web marketing, for example through a newsletter or direct mail. Selling is the secondary objective. The main objective of an e-commerce site is to promote an effective marketing message and to make the buying process as easy as possible. Creating a marketing base is the secondary objective. They usually have two types of customers, transactional and relational. The purchase decisions of transactional customers are influenced by short-term reasons such as price, convenience, and/or availability. Relational customers have built up a relationship with the business usually through previous contact. Their purchase decisions are based more on the customer relationship that has been built up, quality of support, and knowledge of the product or service or brand. You need to identify where your market is and what your capabilities are. You need to identify what gives you a competitive advantage over your rivals. Once you have done that you will be able to generate qualified traffic, turn the traffic into qualified leads, and turn the leads into customers. Your website strategy is therefore critical to the success of your site. It must be focused, to ensure your site is visible and attracts qualified leads, and your web pages must be usable to ensure you can convert your traffic.

The benefits of a web design strategy are many. It provides a historical reference point for the project. It seeds much better internal communications for your team. Ideally, the Design Strategy document is treated like a living document and ideas for your team’s workload and budget are measured against it. There may be reasons to shift strategy and move in different directions. When that happens your challenge will be to step back and re-tool the design strategy to meet the changing conditions.