Hiring For Website Design: Defining Your Purpose First

Hiring For Website Design: Defining Your Purpose First
photo credit: liforte.com

With the help of the Internet, a lot of businesses have been able to start up and make a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time. However, those businesses couldn’t do that without successful websites. There is a lot of information available about what makes a website successful – including what color scheme you should use. What having a successful website really entails is designing the site with a purpose and making sure that what you do on your site reflects that purpose. Deciding on your website’s purpose is often the most difficult part.

In the past, websites were created to provide information. With Google searches and forum sites everywhere, customers no longer need to visit your website to figure out what your business does. They often find that out elsewhere. Your website should exist with the purpose of converting your customer and showing what makes your business different from your competition. And your web design should reflect what your specific conversion goals are.

Conversion

It’s a word that business owners use a lot, but narrowing down what it means can be a challenge. That’s because a conversion means different things to different businesses. For example, if I own a restaurant, a conversion from my website  is reflected by someone who visited my site and then chose to come to my restaurant and purchase a meal. If I’m an online retail business selling soap, a conversion for me is someone ordering a bar of soap directly from my site.

Conversions also don’t have to have a strong end goal like a purchase or visit. Maybe you’re a new business and you just want to get the word out about your brand. A conversion in that case might just be having someone visit your site or share it.

What you want from your site will influence how it’s designed. It’s essential that you’re able to communicate your goals for your site to your designer. This information will get you a much better site than just deciding you’d like a specific sort of logo design or font style.

Mobile Design

No matter what your goals are, though, you should look towards responsive design. This means making your website mobile-friendly. You can see mobile design in action by visiting some of your favorite sites and making your browser bigger or smaller. If the site doesn’t change based on the size of your browser, that site isn’t using responsive design.

Your site needs to be mobile friendly because more and more people are researching businesses from their smart phones. An eMarketer study showed that a rapidly increasing amount of American’s media consumption time is spent on their cell phones. If your new design isn’t designed with mobile users in mind, you could be losing out on a lot of business.

Coding for responsive design itself can be tricky, but there are some basic design principles you can keep in mind to make the transition to responsive design as easy as possible. Remember that your design needs to be simple. A simple design is easier to adjust to different sizes. Also, keep your content (text and graphic) to a minimum. If you don’t need it, delete it.

When you visit your designer, know exactly what you want your website to accomplish–whether that’s purchases or visitors. Have a simple design concept in mind to give your designer an idea of what it is you’re looking for. If you’re really not sure, your designer can help you come up with a design that will be easy to convert for mobile.

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