Web design obviously is not going to be for everyone. After all, there is a huge abundance of professions and industries out there. We all choose our own path, most people do not choose web design, and that is perfectly OK. Even if web design is not your thing however, you do need to have a basic knowledge on it, especially if you are creating a website for your company.
Many businesses think that they can just outsource a company to develop their website. Yes, you can do this, but you will be the one who is ultimately disappointed with the result. This type of web design outsourcing results in a poorly designed site that does not relate to your business. In order to ensure that your website is designed perfectly there are only a few web design things that you need to understand. Here they are:
What Businesses Need To Know When Outsourcing Their Web Design:
1) Understanding Your Business
You may be hiring a web design expert, but they need to become an expert in your business. No, they do not need to know about your daily runnings or every details about your business, but your web design company needs to understand the heart of your business. They need to know what they’re portraying and why.
2) Have a Digital Marketing Strategy
Before a brief is made, you need to have a strategy. If you are unsure of this ask your web design company to help you. A website with no strategy is like a ship with no sails, you will be sitting in the middle of the ocean with no-one to connect with.
3) Create The Website Brief Together:
This may sound odd. You might think that you would let you web design company come up with a full brief and come back to you, but that is by no means ideal. As we said above, you are the expert on your business, thus you need to help in creating the brief. They are the web design expert, you are the company expert – between you both you will understand the what, why and how of your website and its development.
4) Look at Your Web Designer’s Portfolio
Many businesses may know how to design and develop specific aspects, but just have not had that project yet. That is perfectly fine. You do need to gauge from their web design portfolio however, if they have the design/development capabilities. If every website looks the same, is basic or lacks functionality then we would advise choosing someone else to begin with.
5) Search Engine Optimisation
Once your brief is made, you need to plan for search engine optimisation. Each page needs to be designed with the purpose of getting customers to land on it. This is good for customers as they’ve found a good product/service and good for your business too. Search will make or break your website, so it needs to be planned in your web design before development begins – and this includes content.
6) Social Media Integration
Your site needs to be the capital of your online presence with your social media all connected to it and heading back towards it. Equally, there needs to be sections on your site for your social media. Everything in your web design needs to be connected.
7) Mobile Responsive
These days, over 70% of website visits are on mobile. Your site needs to be mobile responsive. More than this, Google downgrades websites that fail their mobile responsive test. Any business online cannot afford to have Google in the opposing corner. Make your life easy for you, your business and your customers by planning a mobile responsive site from the onset.
8) Company Liaison
Whether it is you or someone that you assign, you need to have a liaison in your company who will speak to your web design company. Without this, wires will get crossed, ideas will get muddled, time will be spent chopping, changing an rearranging and the date of your site’s release will almost definitely be pushed back.
9) Content Management
You need to also make sure that your site is user friendly for you! You want to know that after the site is live you can change paragraphs, text, add blogs, add products, etc. all with ease. Make sure that your web designer develops the website to be easy for you to use.
With these 9 steps accounted for, your website will be well on its way to perfect web design. Make sure that you keep these in mind and remember that you can always contact us if you ever have any web design related questions.
This article on the basics of web design was brought to you by Pádraig Power, marketing executive at The Digital Department – experts in website design and development, based in Ballincollig, Co. Cork, Ireland.