Developing and implementing an effective website design strategy is critical to the success of your online marketing efforts. The latest and greatest features mean nothing if they don’t produce results that align with your web design strategy goals.
Business owners and marketers feel the pain associated with a poor website design strategy in a variety of ways. Here are some of the most common pain points:
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The website looks great, but there are no conversions.
A conversion occurs when a user takes an action that represents a deeper level of engagement and draws them deeper into your sales funnel. It is usually a transaction, and may be either a financial transaction or an informational transaction.
A financial transaction represents the bottom of the sales funnel. A customer making a purchase, like buying on Amazon, ends the sales process for that specific product or service. More transactions, conversions, and sales may occur, but the sales process for that individual product has concluded.
A sale converts a lead into a customer, and sales are the ultimate conversion goal for most organizations.
Informational transactions occur at the top and middle of the sales funnel. If a user exchanges their contact information for a resource like an educational white paper, that informational transaction is an example of a conversion from visitor to lead. Other examples of informational transaction conversions include email subscribers, social media “likes,” “follows,” and “shares.”
Further informational transaction conversions are forms of lead qualification and nurturing, as the lead is continually drawn deeper through the sales process.
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Your Website is Attracting the Wrong Crowd.
Your website is the core of your online brand. Each aspect of the design and every bit of content contributes to your corporate identity. The question is: which users does your online branding attract?
Does every contact form submission from your website lead to pointless interactions, lost leads, or hassle customers? If so, you need to make changes to your website design strategy and put them in place right away.
Do you get a high number of visits, but have proportionally high bounce rates (the number of single page visits)? This is a strong indication that your users aren’t engaged.
High bounce rates tell you that you’re either targeting the wrong folks, or else you’re doing a poor job of understanding your target audience’s needs and providing design and content that meets those needs. Your website design strategy either needs to be improved or implemented better.
A website design strategy brings a new level of clarity and structure to your online brand. It helps you avoid the pain of a distracting platform, no conversions, the wrong conversions, and a poor return on your investment.
Don’t pursue the flashy designs, set up shop on every social media platform, or disorient yourself with every new tech feature…unless it makes sense and fits into your strategic game plan.
Your web strategy should impact every decision you make, limit distractions, and focus your energy on creating a system that produces consistent return on your investment. Your strategy should build around a core conversion goal, and every design decision should contribute to reaching that goal.
So What is a Website Design Strategy?
Your web design strategy needs to view your website as the hub your online brand. You build out your online presence via social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, and more for the purpose of directing people back to your website.
Once you get users to your website, it’s important to lead them through a user flow designed specifically with your conversion goal in mind. Instead of presenting an overwhelming number of options and various calls-to-action (CTA’s), direct your visitors to take the next logical action.
Your website is a great tool for automation of the sales process. Unlike a human salesperson, your website is not limited by time and space constraints. It can simultaneously walk an infinite number of leads through your sales process. Harness that potential by implementing a strategic user flow design!
What are the component of a website design strategy?
We’ve put together a free checklist to help you in the development of your web design strategy. It has more details than are outlined here, but these are the core components of any successful website design strategy:
- Your Goal – define the primary goal of your website. Why does it exist? It’s tough to get or measure ROI if you don’t have goals for your investment.
- Your Success – what determines your success? Maybe it’s a specific sales dollar figure, a lead generation number, or a traffic metric. If you don’t have a measurement scale in place, how will you know what’s working and what’s not?
- Your Audience – identify your ideal buyer persona and tailor your marketing efforts to their needs and situation. You need to understand the pain before you know how to present a solution.
- Your Brand – consistency online and offline is crucial to sustainable success. Know your organization’s core value proposition, and build around your true identity.
- Your Situation – what are your internal strengths and weaknesses? What are the opportunities and threats in the external environment? Know your limitations and invest within your means.
- Your Process – What is the process for achieving your goals, meeting the needs of your target market, branding authentically, and overcoming your hurdles? Figure out the game plan and put all the pieces together to create an integrated website design strategy that can be implemented practically.
Your web design strategy isn’t rocket science, it’s problem solving. Define the variables and put the pieces together. Then measure the results and continuously improve.
It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
If you’re struggling to put together your strategy, having a hard time with the technical implementation, or need a hand at any point in the process, please get in touch – we’d love to help out!
And please, leave a comment if you have anything to add, a question to ask, or take issue with anything we’ve written.