What your web developer, designer, or agency needs from you
So you are ready to start a your conversation with your web technologist. Great! There are somethings that you can prepare before hand to help them give you the best advice, design and help. # more Firstly, provide information about what your business actually does. This helps the web technologist get a thorough understanding about what you do, who you are, how long you have been in business, your point of difference from your competitors. This information is so important in regards to how you site is designed to support your business. If you are building a house you would like the designer and builder to understand how you would live in that house and any particular lifestyle quirks that the house would need to cater for. Following on from this, how is the site going to support your business? In other words what is the site going to accomplish. This is often called the goal or aim of the website. If it is about selling your products or services then there are a whole section of design decisions that impact on the design compared to a brochure site, with just a blog. If you have a clear understanding about how the site is going to support your business then it means that the web technologist will have a better understanding. Some questions to think about to provide answer to your web technologist are: * Do you want to get more inbound leads, phone enquiries, quote requests? * Is it about brand awareness? What makes you unique in your business sector? Who are your competitors? * Does your audience need educating about your products and services? What pain points are you taking away for your clients/customers? * Is the site there to promote and encourage sales and conversions. * Do you want to build an email list of prospects to send information to? * Do you want to encourage interaction on the site or on your social media platform? Sometimes if you do not understand what you want your web technologist will be able to help you with a pre-project brainstorming session. Or they may make it apart of the conversation. Either way it does make clear the purpose of your site. The questions about can help you determine what your sites purpose is to be.
But I already have a site
If you have a website already, you may think that it makes the new design / website easier to do. Some information that you should have ready for the conversation is: * the age of the site – is it older than 12months old * what you love or dislike about editing the site – if you are able to that is * the current content management system (CMS) – what you like or dislike about it * what are the metrics for inbound leads, google analytics (if you have that set up) or conversions. Is it giving you the results that you would like to see? * hosting details – especially if you are staying with the same web hosting company. Regardless of whether you have a current website or not if you have any design style guides (for print even) or a business branding document then this should also be given to the web technologist to use.
Next Bit of Information
So you have worked out what you want your site to do as far as your clients/customers, now is the time to start thinking about the functionality of the website. Do you have any sites that you visit that you like because they are easy to use or have a feature that you think is cool and want to use as well.
* What do you consider to be the standard functionality of a website? * Is there to be some sort of inbound marketing capability (email, signup lists etc)? Have you autoresponders set up? * Are you going to write blog articles or have a FAQ section? Or is this going to be more of a latest news type of section? Are visitors to your site going to be able to comment on your articles. * Are you going to have advertising on your site? * Are you going to have demonstration videos, videos generally or a photo gallery? * Do you need to have some sort of catalogue? * Is the site to be viewed on mobile devices? * What sort of forms are you going to have for contact, signups etc.?
How do I know if this website is successful?
This is something only you are the business owner can define. It might be about how many enquiries you get from your site or the number of sales that come through your website. Success sometimes does not come overnight either. There may need to be some tweaks along the way to improve the website. Some common metrics that can be recorded by you are: * how many social media followers you have? * how many signups for your freebie? if you have one that is. * Number of sales through your shopping cart * the average size of a client/customer’s order> * the activity on the site? what sections are most popular? how long they stay on you site. * The overall traffic (page views) for your site. * how many new enquiries you get from the site?
So once you have all this information ready for your discussion go ahead and book the meeting to kick off your project. If you like what you have read then do not hesitate to contact me to start the ball rolling on your next digital project. I can help you with all of the above and then some more.
