How To Design A Website
A professionally-designed website is a very cost-effective way to promote your business to existing and new customers.
But the process of planning and designing a website can seem very complicated, with many different options and considerations.
Glasgow Web Design are very experienced at building websites as well as communicating in plain English. Call us now to discuss your website requirements on 0141 424 3408.
Designing A Website
Knowing how to design a website involves far more than just website design. In fact, developing a web site properly involves a considerable amount of planning, and can be broken down into the following steps:
- Analyse Your Competitors
- Understand Your Audience
- Define The Purpose of Your Website
- Outline The Content Of Your Website
- Choose A Website Name
- Design The Website
We will help you to plan your website properly from the beginning, to make sure that your website will be an effective selling tool that helps your business.
Analyse Your Competitors
The first step in website planning is to spend a little time online building up a picture of your competitors' websites. Look at websites in the same industry or in related industries, operating locally or further afield. Look at websites of known competitors. Look at websites that rank highly in Google when you search for local businesses offering the same services as you. Look at the design of websites that you use yourself, and try and figure out whether there are particular styles you like or dislike.
Don't worry if you think this seems rather time-consuming. We will help identify a small selection of relevant, competing websites, and discuss the pros and cons of these with you.
Understand Your Audience
The second step is to understand the people who will use your website. The aim here is to identify the different groups of people who might use your website, and to work out what they will want to achieve while they are on your website. Examples of different user groups might include potential customers who want to check product information or prices, existing customers who want to confirm your contact details, local media who want to gather information for a story, and so on.
We will help you define relevant groups of people that might use your website, to ensure that your website will meet or exceed their expectations.
Define The Purpose Of Your Website
The third step in planning your website is to write a summary of the purpose of your website, ideally in a single sentence. If you are unable to do this your website may not be sufficiently focused to successfully meet your objectives. The purpose of your website may be to generate leads or sales, to inform suppliers and business partners, to provide after-sales support to your customers, to establish trustworthiness and credibility, or to position your company as an industry leader. For example, if the purpose of your website is to attract new business leads, then your website should be built with search engine optimisation at its core.
We will help you to narrow down the exact purpose of your website by discussing examples of websites that have been built with different purposes in mind.
Outline The Content Of Your Website
The fourth step in planning your website is to outline the website content required to satisfy your target audience, in line with the overall purpose of your website. In general, your website should provide information that answers your site visitors' questions, though many other types of content may be relevant.
For most businesses this usually means talking about your major products and services and providing your contact information, but you could also include testimonials, examples of previous projects, current clients, company background information, illustrative costs, frequently asked questions, in-depth articles about your business niche, standard terms and conditions, links to relevant resources and so on. You may also wish to provide interactive content, such as a discussion forum, blog, poll or customer satisfaction survey.
We will help you to decide what content will best help your audience achieve their objectives by discussing the pros and cons of content provided by similar websites.
Choose A Website Name
Choosing a good website name is important because your domain name will become a key part of your overall brand. Your choice of domain name may be restricted by availability, but it is also possible to purchase domain names that have already been registered but are not currently in use. Domain name choice is covered in more detail in our domain name advice page.
We will help you choose a suitable domain name by showing you some examples of domain names, discussing the pros and cons of each, checking availability, and, if required, sourcing appropriate domain names for sale.
Design The Website
Designing the actual website is in some ways the last step, since the visual appearance of your website should complement the decisions you have already made about the purpose of your website, your target audience, and the content that you wish to provide.
We will help you to develop a suitable design for your website by discussing relevant design elements on other websites. We will show you different examples of colour schemes, navigation systems, general page layout, and so on, in order to build up a solid picture of how you want your website to look. Once we have completed the initial draft website design we will get your feedback on it and make any required changes, before launching your new website.
Web Designing UK
We believe that proper planning is the most important part of web design, though it is all too often overlooked. For free, no-obligation advice on planning and designing your website, give us a call now on 0141 424 3408.
