Having a poorly designed website is like a sports car without a battery, it may look great but it isn’t doing much for you. A website must be visually appealing yet functional so visitors can easily navigate and obtain information from it. A good website will ultimately drive your business and make you money while a bad website will cost you money with little to no return on investment.
AVP’s Design Director, Ami Nyitray, explains the steps she takes when designing a quality website:
1. Become Familiar with the Clients Branding
“First I begin by familiarizing myself with the clients branding to get an idea of the colors & fonts for the new website as well as other branding elements that might influence the design.”
Becoming familiar with your client’s brand is essential to delivering a website that communicates the client’s essence and mission to its target audience.
2. Develop a Sitemap
“Next, I create a site map to help map out the information architecture and functionality for the site. Custom functionality might include things like interactive event calendars, forms, special searches, or checkouts. The sitemap will dictate the navigation structure of the menus.”
It is essential that content on the website be organized in such a way that users can find the information they are looking for promptly and efficiently with little effort on their part. Users that come to a website and are not able to find what they are looking for quickly become frustrated and leave the site, possibly to look on a competitor’s website instead.
3. Decide on a Domain Name and Hosting Service
“The next step is to create a domain name and choose a hosting service.”
A good domain name is essential to the success of your website. If people can’t find your website, it’s basically like you don’t even have one. A good domain name will be as close to the name of the company as possible. If your company is Apple, the domain name should ideally be apple.com, not pizza.com.
4. Site Build
“After we decide on the domain name and where it will be hosted, it’s time to put everything together and begin constructing the site.”
This step is where all the pieces come together like a puzzle.
5. Testing
“Once the site is built, we test the functionality on different devices such as laptops, desktops and mobile devices. We also test the site using various browsers because sometimes sites display differently on Safari than Chrome or Internet Explorer.”
Testing is important when creating a quality website. If someone tries to access the website and links are broken or the homepage doesn’t appear as it should, chances are they won’t even try to navigate any further. Testing ensures all of the website’s different elements are functioning as they should be.
6. Launch
“Finally, the new website is ready for launch. The launch is usually accompanied by an email blast and social media announcements.”
A website is an essential tool for any business, especially in today’s world where technology reigns supreme and the internet is a necessity. Making sure people know about the website is vital to gain page traffic and ultimately drive customers to your business.
