An internet site is an essential part of any organization advertising tool set. If you want to look credible and established in this day and age, a website is essential, rather than simply a nice bolt on. But if you’ve never needed to design a website before, how can you be sure that your web project gets happening the right footing? After all, there’s a confusing array of options and you can easily understand this wrong, wasting lots of time and money.
Before getting going on your internet design project, listed here are the 10 essential things to ask yourself to be able to write a great brief. Hiring a website design company is just like hiring any professional designer, the greater the brief you create, the greater your chances will be to get a finished product you are pleased with.
1. What specific objectives do you have for the site? Do you want to sell products, generate sales leads, or just create an online presence for your business and brand?
It is crucial you know exactly what you want to achieve with your site. The main difference in functionality, design and cost between a brochure site as well as an e-commerce site can be enormous. Consider what your objectives are and just how you will measure whether your site meets these goals. Your design agency will require your brief to be clear on this.
Tip: think long-term. Will your objectives alternation in the future? If that’s the case you might want to build some flexibility into your site.
2. Do your objectives for the website link to your overall business and marketing plan? i.e. will an internet site support your business goals?
Any marketing program needs to be associated with your company goals in order to be worthwhile. This may seem like an obvious point, but it is surprising the number of people jump into building a website, without comprehending the wider context or opportunities open to the company.
Should you haven’t written your own business plan or marketing plan yet, then I strongly recommend carrying this out first. Putting your opinions in writing and spelling out how everything works (from banking, to premises, marketing, insurance and much more) will help you to decide how important your website is to your broader business activity. It will help you to produce a realistic budget for your project.
Tip: Try to keep your business objectives SMART – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time bound.
3. Perhaps you have reviewed those sites you want and dislike and listed why?
Where to consider inspiration in website design is actually the internet. You will find millions upon an incredible number of sites online, with lots of more being added each and every day. If you take the time to appear closely you will be easily able to pick out the styles and functionality you like and importantly, what you don’t like. These ideas should form part of the brief you ship to your design agency.
Which sites in the event you look at?
The initial step is to look at your main competitors and to critique their sites. Next, consider the broader industry / profession that you operate and finally inspirational websites. Far example, if you’re an architects practice, take a look at other architects first, then consider design or construction company sites, before a general trawl from the internet.
Tip: Try to keep in your mind that you’re only looking for ideas and not a template copying.
4. Are you aware what content you need to include in your site?
You have to consider both the text and images you would like in your website. Not just what you want to include, but how you’ll create it. For example, do you have photos and pictures already, or how about to take some new photos, or write some text. Will you need an expert copy writer to assist put this together, or edit your writing?
In addition have a think about whether you want to change increase your articles regularly, or if it will remain fairly static? If you want to be flexible then you’ll need a cms (CMS) running at the back end of the site. These range in price from cheap to vastly expensive, depending on the degree of complexity associated with your website. There are also some free (i.e. free) CMS programmes, but your designer will need to set them up to work in your site.
Tip: Be cautious because the content and the way it’s managed will have a dramatic impact on the cost of building and looking after your website.
5. How would you manage the site once it’s been launched?
Building your site is just the initial step in successful website marketing. Once launched, you will need to keeping it to find the most value for the outlay. You should think of content updates, hosting, website name registration, security updates, managing interactions with browsers (blogs, contact forms, forums) and much more.
Have you got the skills and time internally to handle this, or will your internet design agency be responsible? IF so what ongoing charges will be incurred? If you are planning to manage this in-house, must you train up a member of staff? If so what costs are related to this? Can your design agency train your staff, or can they give a maintenance pack / instruction manual to assist?
Tip: Choose your internet design company carefully if you need ongoing support. If you choose a cheap, small agency, they may not have access to the capacity to provide ongoing support.
6. How do you want to interact with your browsers / readers?
There are numerous choices for interacting with the future prospect, from simple email contact forms, to blogs and forums. Each comes with its very own benefits and drawbacks. For example, a blog is interactive and ideal for gaining traction on the internet; however it must be updated regularly with relevant content if you’re to appear professional. A simple contact form is the easiest and lowest maintenance option.
Tip: take into account the experience your browsers are searching for. Whether it’s technical support then potentially a forum is the most appropriate. If however it is a simple question, then an e-mail form is less difficult to manage.
7. How will you attract visitors to your site?
There are lots of options for getting traffic. Consider seo (SEO) and ask any design agency you approach what their expertise is within this regard. Other options include paid for search / pay per click campaigns, e-book give-aways, interactive content such as blogs and forums, and crucially offline promotions i.e. where can you market your website name, for instance in your business cards or in press releases.
Tip: you will find many books, videos, courses and programmes you can purchase to explore traffic generation for your website, but your agency’s experience will also be extremely valuable.
8. What are the needs and wants of the target audience?
Your site will not be much use should you haven’t considered the requirements and wants of your audience. For instance, do they routinely have a broadband connection or dial-up? Which browsers will they use, Internet Explorer, Safari, FireFox or others? Will some access your site via a mobile phone, iphone or a PDA? How technologically advanced could they be? Could they be pleased to enter their credit card details online, or in the event you need to use a more trusted e-commerce solution, such as PayPal? Are you currently promoting a useful resource, likely to attract repeat visitors?
Tip: Just like any marketing communications programme, this will be most effective of you consider your customers wants and needs in early stages in the web design process.
9. What security and accessibility standards do you need to consider?
There are numerous security considerations to remember whenever you develop a site. You can also find laws that mean you have to make your site available to people with disabilities. For example in the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act requires websites to be useable for those who have bad eye sight. There are ways to overcome this, for example a internet browser with sight difficulties could use a text reader which literally reads out the content of the website. So that you must make sure any images are appropriately labelled.
Tip: talk to your web design agency about accessibility and security. It’s likely you won’t require the same level of detail here as say a government department, so don’t over do it or perhaps be sold an excessive amount of.
10. And finally, what budget do you have with this project?
For those who have a lot of money, you’ll be able to be more flexible in choosing your design agency. Often the most impressive answers are achieved when getting a specialised website design company. For those of you with a more limited budget, consider an off the shelf package from companies such as Mr Site
