5 Key Points to Consider Before Investing in a Website Design Project
Blog Overview: For a website to be successful for your business, it needs to go beyond pretty photos and compelling copy. These are important - brand imagery and copywriting are up there on the top success criteria, but that’s not what I’m covering today. We’re digging a bit beyond the obvious to ensure that your website can be designed with strategy and intention.
Here are 5 Key Points to consider when planning your next website design project
Your Brand Identity
If you think of your website as your home, branding is the foundation. If you don’t have a strong foundation, no matter how pretty your finishes, you won’t have longevity. Your business will evolve, and it’s possible that your branding may change so don’t feel like it needs to be forever. However, a successful website will begin with a strong and consistent set of brand guidelines so it needs to be sorted before we start.
There are a few components to branding - visual direction like colour palette, fonts and imagery, positioning in the marketplace, tone of voice & vocabulary, values & connection points, and your logo. Oftentimes, you have a logo and consider yourself done. Unfortunately, your logo is the least important part of your branding. Branding evokes a feeling, vibe and opinion about your company. Your logo alone will not do this.
Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, once said, ‘your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room’. I hate to quote him, but it’s a valid take.
Working with a Brand Designer to establish a strong and strategic visual identity, and even better, a solid brand strategy will ensure that all your marketing efforts will reach the clients that you want to be working with or feel that your product is meant for.
Lastly, your branding should be consistent across all marketing touchpoints. Your colour palette and fonts should be the same on your social media as your website and continue through to all pre and post-purchase communications. This will help establish a consistent & identifiable brand identity and help you become recognized in your industry.
If you are not in a place to afford professional branding, I offer a Mini Brand Add-on to my website design packages. With the help of a Brand Questionnaire and visual inspiration, I create a choice of two colour palettes to best represent your business and target your ideal clientele. This will ensure that your website has a cohesive visual direction.
Your Positioning / Messaging
Within 5 milliseconds of landing on your website, you want your ideal client to know what transformation you offer them. This is possible through a strong brand bio - often your mission statement is used as well.
You need to be clear on what you do, who you help, and how it changes their life right at the top of your website.
Some questions you can ask yourself -
Is there any way you do things differently in your industry?
Do you have a propriety formula, process, or thoughts that differ from what others in your industry are doing?
How can you set yourself apart from others that offer the same service?
Knowing this will help your copy speak to the clients that you want to work with most. If you’re not sure who you want to work with, a Brand Designer who also offers brand strategy can help you through this, and it is also a critical part of building a solid brand.
So again, branding, via your mission, vision, values, voice and positioning is at the heart of a successful design.
Ever found yourself puzzled about how to connect with your soul aligned clients? Uncertain about who you actually want to be working with?
Before diving into website design, it's crucial to understand the heart of your business: your ideal clients and how your offer can transform their lives.
Introducing the Ideal Client Workbook, your compass in navigating the intricate world of your target market.
Your Website Goals
When we work together, one of the questions I ask you is your website goal. What do you want your website to bring you that it isn’t now? More purchases, more enquiries, more newsletter subscribers, more of the right people doing those things? Is it strictly informational? You may have more than one goal, but generally, you will have one main one for your website and each page will then have an end purpose that leads clients to your overarching goal.
Part of a successful website design involves strategy and thinking about how we can guide clients through your website to achieve your desired outcome. What will they need to see to make a buying decision? How can it be set up for success?
So to that end, knowing your main offer and what your goal is for each page is important as your website is designed. It’s also helpful to know for you or your copywriter as the copy structure is laid out and your ideal client is considered.
Keywords You Want to Rank For
Search engine optimization, or SEO, has many components that make it successful. When you say you want to be on the first page of Google, you need to put in some work and possibly hire an SEO specialist to ensure that you’re making the right moves to get there. With billions of websites now live on the world wide web, this is no longer a simple task and can take YEARS of effort depending on the saturation of your market.
There are hundreds of blogs dedicated to SEO, so if you want to learn more, it’s out there. My job as a web designer is to ensure that all SEO is maximized to its potential on Squarespace, using the tools available.
In short, there are a few ways we can easily maximize your SEO and they all revolve around keywords you want to rank for.
Keywords are words or phrases, both short or ‘long tail’ that people type into a search engine to look for a business like yours.
For example, if I’m looking for a rock climbing gym in Waterloo, I will type in ‘rock climbing waterloo’. Ideally, if you own said gym, you are trying to rank for those words, and possibly, surrounding cities, bouldering, fitness, etc. So, you would want to ensure that those words or phrases are throughout your website copy. Location keywords can also be huge if you rely on local traffic as the main driver of your business.
You may hire an SEO expert or your copywriter will help ensure that your website words contain keywords as well. These words are sprinkled through your headings (H1, H2, H3, H4), in your page titles and descriptions, on your images via alt-text, and through blog posts on your website. The more a word or phrase shows up on your website, the better the chance that you will be ranked higher from Google, and thus improve your chances of showing up when potential clients are searching for your type of business.
So that being said, knowing what your keywords are when writing your copy and providing your page titles and descriptions to your web designer can be critical. It’s worth doing a little bit of homework and thinking about this. You can start by researching your competitor rankings and think about how your clients might find you through search.
Websites like Ubersuggest, Keywords Everywhere and Moz is a good place to start learning on a deeper level. Some also have Chrome extensions to download that allow you to do some keyword recon on other websites.
Your Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is a fancy word for freebie or opt-in. It is something that you offer to your clients in exchange for their email address. Once you have their email address, you provide them with a welcome sequence of 3 to 5 emails that provide more insight into what you offer and how you can help them achieve their goals.
Not everyone will be ready to purchase from you right away and sending out emails with value-packed information weekly or monthly will keep you top of mind and help with your overall conversion from website visitor to paying client.
Keep in mind that the lead magnet should be of value to them. Usually, it provides a taste of your paid offers or helps them get over a hurdle so they are ready to work with you. Your lead magnet is hooked up to an email provider like Squarespace Campaigns, Flodesk, Mailerlite, ConvertKit, Mailchimp, etc which provides the email sequence automation.
You can get some ideas for lead magnets on my Blog ‘6 Must Have’s on Your Travel Advisor Website’. The ideas are easily translated by any service provider.
Check out my resources page for links to some of my favourite email providers, copywriters and other design resources.
