
How to create a strategically designed website?
A fully functional and aesthetic website is pivotal in this Digital World, where everyone’s stuck to their phone. From watching movies to buying a pair of shoes, everyone prefers websites to traditional shops. We witnessed a massive rise in the number of websites, be that an eCommerce site or an educational site. Almost everyone likes the easiest way to perform an activity just by a click of a button.
We all know how websites have changed our daily lives. We use these websites to purchase something, attend a meeting, watch a tutorial and time on social media, etc.
They have gained so much importance because they have made our daily life activities more manageable and uncomplicated. Websites help small businesses reduce their spendings while increasing their coverage to customers that are resulting in profits. The competition is proliferating in the number of sites in every category. That’s why everyone is trying to make their website stand out in the sea of competitors.
After relentless hours of research and analysis, we figured out the most efficient ways to create a strategically designed website that will stand out in its functionality and aesthetics.
What is a Strategically Designed Website?
A strategically designed website is not just a beautifully designed website that has an attractive user interface. Still, it is the fusion of your brand’s goals with the design of the website. It is not just a designed website that supports all the recent design trends and is usable or accessible but a website that looks the best and represents its goals.
A Strategically designed website helps you accomplish your organization’s goals. If you have a brand that sells Women’s Fashion Bags, you will have to create your website specifically for the type of products you sell, and your goal will be to attract your ideal clients, not everyone who visits your website. A website with a theme from a decade ago won’t help you achieve the goals you want to achieve.
Many websites look very attractive and look super trendy, but they fail miserably in their intended function. Having an attractive website is as crucial as an intelligent and focused website. A website selling video games should be designed with many large and beautiful pictures with different typography and functionality than a website selling Solar Panels.
Here are some constructive and essential tips when building a website for your business,
Establish Your Goals:
Before contacting web developers and designers, you must know the goal of your website. What do you want to achieve from your website; Do you want to increase sales? Provide informational or Entertaining Content? Whatever that goal is, you should be clear because different purposes require different layouts/designs. Selling Shoes online will need you to have a very different looking and functioning website than one that provides informational content.
A perfect website has a clear direction. A retail website will have a different design than a Video Games Website. Why is that so? Because each is put together to achieve very different goals.
Take a look at the design of the New York Times website above. Its function is to deliver informational content. The minimalist interface serves this function beautifully by fading into the background.
Florence By Mills, a cosmetics and beauty brand by Millie Bobby Brown, is an excellent example of a perfect website. It delivers its message, entertains, and has straightforward navigation to every part. The best part of an attractive website is its home page. It has an entertaining home page that motivates visitors to visit all pages of the website.
Know Your Audience:
Your audience plays a significant role in how your website should look and function. Demographics like age, gender, profession, and technical competency can influence your website’s design and architecture. A Women’s clothing brand’s website will have a different theme and function than a kid’s video game website — your target audience influences which fonts, colors, images, photos, wording, and more to use for optimal results.
Take a look at this Disney website. Its goal is to attract children. The website intends to engage this young audience and wrap the content in a fun way. The strategy is the same for any audience. Remember that a website is not just a piece of art, but it is the face of your brand. As people visit your website, they figure out the credibility of your brand. A beautiful and easily accessible website can increase your sales to the sky.
Determine your Brand Image:
Everyone gets inspired by something in this world. Everywhere is something inspirational, and the same happens with people when they go to a service provider to create a website for their brand. They show the website that has the latest trends in design. As I mentioned earlier, every website has a different goal behind it: selling a product, providing information, or something else. The main thing is the purpose behind the website. If someone runs a Graphic Design Agency, he may want to use many colors or beautiful artworks to impress his clients with his designs or creativity. Still, the same will be inappropriate for a law firm’s website.
It is excellent to use the trends, but don’t forget the goal of your website. If a simple and minimal website is what matches your plan perfectly, go for it. Don’t try to overuse trends. Use your own brand’s image to increase the chances of your audience coming back.
Take a look at the TeamTrees website. This website aims to get donations from people worldwide to plant trees, and when a person donates $1, a tree is planted to fight climate change. A great initiative! But the point is to look at the website’s design. Very simple and minimalistic. And artwork showing people planting trees can be seen in the background, and it has a clear call to action on the home page. It has such a fantastic theme that everyone visiting must be visiting all the pages. Their website is designed strategically in a good way!
It follows the brand image and is also following the trends while still sticking to the website’s goal.
Keep everything simple and remove all the unnecessary items in the website that distract the visitors, and don’t try to show them everything on the homepage. You don’t want to overwhelm your visitors; they might exit the website prematurely.
Focus on Speed:
Technology has made our daily life activities so fast that we have developed the habit of being impatient once. We want everything quickly. The same is true with the websites. Who would love to wait too much for a website to load despite having a fast internet connection? It would help if you kept website speed on the top of the priority list when creating yours. Websites that load too slowly only increase the bounce rate.
People, on average, can only wait about 2 seconds for a website to load. If your website is taking longer than that to load, try to lower that by optimizing it. A website with the lowest loading speed has good chances of ranking on Google’s search engine if optimized with other components such as keywords, titles, and off-page SEO.
Use Quality Images:
We all love great and high-quality Images; no one likes to look at poorly captured or baseless pictures. Images are a great way to present a message artistically and professionally. A website with professional and high-quality images is considered more trusted than a website with low-quality or amateur images. High-quality images are vital when selling shoes, clothes, or other checked things before buying them.
Let’s take the example of Adidas; we all know it is a big brand, but we should learn something from them. They follow all the strategies written in this ebook, and they upload stunning and high-quality pictures of their products; that is why they are the leading industry and trusted by everyone. What they show is what they sell.
Optimize for Smartphones:
The increase in the number and quality of smartphones has drastically reduced the usage of Desktops and laptops. Everyone now surfs the internet with their phones. A mobile-friendly website is critical if someone wants to increase engagement and their visitors stay longer on their website. Visitors on mobile are more likely to spend more time and engage with the content if it is well optimized for mobiles.
So to create a strategically designed website, these were some of the rules, or whatever you call them, must be followed to achieve the results you want.
Take a closer look at the Marketing Built For Success.
For assistance with website strategy or social media marketing, contact Tisha Littlejohn at 312 798 9332 or info@tljcreativemarketing.com.