What is an ideal website? Several individuals and brands are hunting for the answer. There is a cut-throat competition out there. More than 5 million sites are hosted globally every day. How do you make yours distinct yet relevant for your audience?
Let’s break it down for you. The ideal process is a sequential flow of the website plan charted below.
- Purpose of your website
- Platform and Recent Web Trends
- Branding
- Web content
- Structure of the Site
- Bird Eye View
- Development Phase and Launch
- Analyze and Implement
purpose Of Our Website
Defining a goal is the first step that one should take before starting to design a website page. Having the bigger picture in mind will help you weave a proper and effective track to reach it.
So take a moment, and draft a purpose statement for your website. This will be crucial. Some questions that will assist you are:
- Do I need to generate more leads?
- Should my potential consumers reach out or inquire about the services?
- Should my website be focused around building the brand identity?
- Do I need to make a virtual store that directly ships products to consumers?
- Do I need to spread some sort of awareness for a cause?
List your answers down. At times, you will find a host of purposes. But you can have only one main goal for your website. Others can be pointers to keep note of while designing the website. However, it is that one apex objective that you will be rooting for.
Once the goal of your website is crystal clear, everything else will fall in place. Your website will be presented before the audience with much clarity. Thus, your website will deliver your message loud and clear.
Platform and Recent Web Trends
As the website owner, have you hired a professional team for it? Or, are you gunning on website builders to create your website?
Platforms
If you have taken on the responsibility without hiring a developer, then you should be completely fine. Do not be anxious if you will be able to create a competent website.
There are plenty of easy website builders for you to choose from. Few popular ones have been mentioned below.
- WordPress
- Wix
- BigCommerce
- SquareSpace
- Shopify
To narrow down your choices to one, keep a list of parameters. Compare them based on,
- Scope of editing tools and customization options
- Pricing
- Third-party marketing tools
- Customer Support
- Portability and Ownership of Data
Website Trends
Why follow trends, when you wish to stand out? Adhering to recent trends of websites can make yours relevant to the consumers. You will not want your viewers to think of your brand as rigid, not flexible enough to go with the flow.
Websites have evolved phenomenally from their inception. What has made some of the websites stand so firm in the online community? – The ability to pick and execute poignant trends.
Some of the latest trends that have proven effective and been adopted massively are enumerated below.
- Animations – Some subtle movement on the site can make the user experience very interesting. Parallax scrolling is one of the techniques which is being implemented on a large scale.
- Typography – One goal to ensure top-notch typography is to use minimal variations in fonts. Do not use numerous font families for your text. Also, keep the style simple and readable. You can experiment with some retro and quirky fonts, but do not compromise with the readability of the content.
- Color Palette- Colors are nutrients to the human mind. However, it does not signify that you have a rainbow envisioned for your site. Keep it pleasing to the eyes. Very lately, pastel colors have been making a statement. At the same time, neon displays are also popular. Choose the one that suits your brand aesthetics.
- Illustrations – These serve as attractive elements on the web page. Illustrations are eye-catchy and are smartly used to convey a specific message.
- Micro-interactions – Motion for Emotion.
This is a calculated move that designers swear by. Such fine details make the website lively. Changing of the cursor icon, or a color change on the tab, or the use of emojis to demonstrate a particular click.
Branding
Let’s move to the quintessential step of designing your website. Remember about standing out of the crowd? Well, let’s address that. You do not want to get lost in the large pool of sites.
- First things first – a domain name. It pretty much starts with the URL. Your brand identity unfolds from the domain itself. Get yourself one from any of the providers out in the market.
- Does your brand have a logo? If you do not have one yet, you might want to reconsider designating one. A logo will foster an instant brand image. This is the one item that differentiates you from all your competitors. Also, it’s memorable. So get ready to snuggle into your audience’s heads.
- Visuals and aesthetics are the most exciting part of a website. Be it designing them or scrolling through them. Your viewers will be hooked for an extra second, absorbing information from yet another slider only if you can arrest their interest by the site’s appearance.
Keeping up with the previously discussed trends, finalize things to narrate your brand. Pick out fonts and color themes that are aligned with your organization, logo, or service.
Make sure elements that go up on the site are also vehemently used in your product labels, advertisements, and whenever it’s exposed to the audience. Your website should serve as a virtual glimpse into your brand. This is where you push to work it out.
Web Content
Content is the KING. This remains the unchanged, underlying truth. The content of the website goes a long way in structuring the site. Once you are sure what the pages and information need to be displayed; assembling them into a compact form becomes easier.
Start by making a note of your must-have pages. Your Homepage has to top the list. Others that might follow are – the About section, Blog category, Contact details, Menu, Help, and everything else that you deem important for your website.
The written content of your site will drive engagement and determine your SEO ranking. A well-researched and finely curated piece of content will put forth a refined image for you. So while penning particulars, be mindful of the few guidelines.
- Nobody likes long paragraphs of details. Never cram all your facts on the pages. The audience wants short, crisp and to-the-point knowledge about you. “Less is More”. Keep it simple and lucid. Connect to your audience via your words. Maintain a flow and chronology throughout.
- To enhance your site’s visibility, incorporate as many keywords as possible. Use better ranking key phrases. Don’t forget to pay attention to the MetaData and MetaDescription (essentially, page titles and descriptions). SEO-optimized content will steer greater traffic and boost engagement. You can count on tools that will assist in SEO-rich content – Google Trends and Keyword Planner being a few of them.
Structure of the Site
Don’t you get irritated by disarray? It sure leaves a poor impression. During the ideation stage of your website, lay special emphasis on arranging all the decided elements so far.
To start with the website architecture, imagine a user’s journey throughout the site. What he’ll first see? Which section will he head over to? Which tab should he first click? Your site should be streamlined as per all such requirements.
- Set a hierarchy of the pages and sliders appearing on the site. Keep the count of the number of sections limited on the Homepage.
- Do not cluster. Leave ample breathable space for the eyes. This will aid important features to come to light aptly.
- In a recent eye-tracking study, it has been found that users read online content in a rough F pattern. Designers too prefer structuring a site based on this reading technique. This way, your information has lesser chances of getting neglected or skipped.
- Strike the right proportion of images and text on the pages. Try out different combinations of image and text placeholders. Take into account the font size of headings, subheadings, and descriptions.
- For better user-friendly navigation, make clever use of CTA’s and backlinks. A well-built menu will render a smoother user experience.
Also Read: Does Website Matter In B2B? Its Role & Power
Bird Eye View
Before getting your hands dipped in the website creation, a mockup is an advised step. Is it not a waste of time? If you do not want to get back to square one, once you are halfway through the design of the website; then do not skip a mockup.
Verify, whether your website goal has been met. Whatever you had planned so far, did you come up with strategies around that? Has it been put together well?
Also, focus if the structure and content of the site have blended smoothly. Is there a proper link and connection throughout the site? If yes, it’s half the battle won! Now it is time to start with the actual process.
Development Phase and Launch
With a highly planned roadmap, you are all set to create your website. Since you are ready with your decided platform, implement the tools proficiently. An important factor will be to make your website mobile responsive. 58% of users access the internet via their cell phones. So, make sure your website caters to this vast majority as well.
Test the website on various other devices. Check by resizing your browser window. Recheck all the links. Delete any broken link if present. Once you are done with the development phase, test your website to make it free of all sorts of errors. You may also use a cross-browsing extension to test your site.
Now scale up your site for the launch. If you have developed your site using a website builder, then you are just a click away from launching it. While in another way, install a plugin for production. You can carry out some recommendations of your host server for various migration plugins and then finally launch your site.
Also Read: Mobile-First Website Design
Analyze and Implement
Now that your site’s public, is your job done? Not really. The dynamic nature of websites makes them an appropriate means of communication with your target audience. You can tweak or update anything on your site even after it goes live.
Most of the forums have their built-in analytical plugins which deliver regular results and figures. Examine the data closely. The comprehensive behavioral metrics give you an idea of what pages you should work on. It will also help you know what your audience likes on the page. You can devise better strategies to make your site more effective.
You are all set!
With this you crossed the first hurdle in the way of your powerful B2B website – filling the information gap. You have gathered enough details and tips to get started. Set your creativity and ingenuity rolling to incorporate these touchpoints and design a dynamic website.