Website Design - 17 Apr 2014

Website Design – The Crossroads of Your Business

When you approach the problem of how to design a website, you’re not coming from just anywhere. You have a business or an idea for a business and you want to create a platform for it. You may not know how to design a website but you know what you’re after. Before you even approach a professional web design company, make sure you get the lie of the land. Do the necessary research. Look at what similar sites are doing. What are they doing well? What are they doing badly? The better you understand what you need and want, the easier it’s going to be to communicate with the designer.

Where Are You Going?

Before you start learning how to design a website, ask yourself “Why?” The web-designer will need a lot of information from you. What is your target audience? What are your goals? Where are you taking your company? Creating a website can be a process of discovery. A great opportunity to confront all the big questions about your business!

A Question of Scale

If your needs are basic, then learning how to design a website isn’t that difficult. You sign up for webhosting, you choose a domain name and then you create the site. Sounds easy, right? Well, it really depends on the scale of your business and what you intend to use your website for. The more complex the conversion goals and the larger the company, the more likely you’ll need a holistic design package. You’ll need someone to build and properly optimize a completely unique site.

The Design Process

The web-designer will determine, based on their researches of your product and industry, what your website should look like. If your site simply contains information about your services, then the task is relatively straightforward. It will consist of a homepage and several other pages detailing your services. It should have some nice dropdown menus, give a good sense of your company ethos and have an easy-to-locate search function. On the other hand if you’re setting up an ecommerce business or building a social media site, then things get much more complicated. Hosting costs go up and you need to consider things like database management.

Finding someone who knows how to design a website is easy. Many excellent companies exist who do just that. But before you commit, make sure there is a meeting of the minds. Make sure they can deliver what they say they can. There’s more to a site than simply building it. It has to be regularly maintained and optimized. A website is a crossroads from which your company can proceed in many directions. Whichever road you choose to travel, journey with people you trust.