When it comes to creating a website that really makes an impact on your sales, and your business growth, you need more than just the latest gimmicks. And while a stunning website, with original typography and professional imagery will help to capture your audiences attention, web design is more than that. In fact, there are many steps to planning the design of a website. And here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are web design experts. We work with Manchester based companies in a variety of sectors, to provide all manner of web design solutions. As well as web marketing too! As a result, we have produced this guide to planning your web design for business growth.
The role of data
When making big plans for your web design, you need to use data, and statistics to shape your plans. This data is key, particularly in relation to:
- The purpose of the website – Whether you are building a fresh new website, or simply redesigning an old one, you need to know what your website is aiming to achieve. Do you want to build a brand identity? Present an authentic image of your company? Or simply sell your products? Whatever your purpose, the web design needs to match this to really help your business grow.
- Your target audience- The demographics of your target audience aught to shape your design principles in practice. So if you are aiming to target a younger audience, your colour scheme, typography and overall layout might be very different to a website aiming to target a more mature audience. With this in mind, you need to check out the data and stats in relation to your target audience, and make sure you provide a website that is designed for their expectations
Planning your web design for business growth
If you are serious about using your website to grow and develop your business, you need to plan each element with certain aims in mind. These include:
- meeting the user expectations – all elements and design features need to be geared around what your target audience will expect and need from a website
- providing a positive user experience- all elements need to load quickly, link correctly and generally do what is expected
- showing off your company branding- for your business to grow, you need to have clear company branding reflected in all aspects of your online presence
- professionalism- business growth can simply come down to how professional your company is perceived to be. Make sure professionalism shines through each aspect of your web design.
So to apply these aims to common web design elements, we need to look at:
- Imagery- Professional, high quality imagery will really help to give a good impression to your audience. Whether it’s a hero image on the landing page, or product images, all of your photos and images should be high quality. They also need to be optimized to reduce loading times and meet user expectations.
- Navigation- The navigation system you use can be influenced by your target audience and your sector. But you need to make sure that you offer a system that allows users to find the desired page or information quickly and easily. This will help promote a positive user experience.
- Layout- Just like your navigation, your layout should be geared towards your target audience. But you also need to balance your creativity with this element, so that the usability is not compromised.
As a result, your web design plan should generally be broken down into each element. And then inspected to make sure it can meet the unique requirements of your company. For more information or advice, particularly about planning your web design for business growth, get in touch with Manchester’s web design experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.