This was a question that I was asked recently. Part of the work I do is to help people to decide what they want from their website. It can take time but here are the keys steps I go through with my clients:
Who is the target audience?
It’s key to understand who the target audience is, their demographic ( location, age, gender), and how can your business help them. A target audience isn’t necessarily your current customers – it could be a new set of people that you’d like to reach out to with a new product or service. Understanding the target audience and even segmenting that audience helps to define the style of the site and also the complete digital marketing strategy of your brand.
Understand your business and brand.
What business do you have (or plan to have)? What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and what Call To Action (CTA) do you want on your site. Do you want to sell to your customers online or do you want a regular site? These are all questions that can help you get an idea of what you want from your website and can guide the scope and budget of the project. This is because eCommerce sites are more expensive than regular sites as they require more functionality and security. Other types of site include portfolio sites for creatives to showcase their work, blog sites to showcase writing and images and landing pages created for a specific marketing campaign.
How much time do you have?
Next decision – self build a website or hire a web designer. This depends on your time available. Successful web design will look professional, build on your brand and get results. This means that a successful web design project takes hours. If you are a busy start-up or established business you will need to speak to a professional web designer. Alternatively, if you are looking to build a blog site to support a hobby or just want to try put your creative skills then you could investigate some of the self-build website tools out there – for a monthly fee they give you access to a website builder and template to help you set up your site from scratch. The decision here depends on how well you know yourself and your time constraints.
Professional design at K Ward Web Design Twickenham also provides optimised Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), good web hosting and domain names and have excellent graphic design skills to create logos and images.
