With the festive season over and a fresh start to the New Year, have you decided that it’s time to revamp your website? Before you rush into the exciting work of designing the look and feel and developing the functionality for the website, there are several important things to consider first.
Brand identity
A new website launch is the perfect time to give your brand a refresh. A brand identity communicates the message you wish to convey to customers and first impressions count. It could be that your current look is dated, your product or service as changed, or your audience has shifted behaviour. It is sensible to get the brand identity and direction clear before asking someone to write a single line of code on your new website.
Purpose of the website
Different websites serve a range of purposes. Some are built to show a portfolio of products, some are built as a brochure site to sell services, others are built for online retail with e-commerce functionality. The list goes on. It is vital to have a clear idea of the purpose of your website early on. This will help dictate which direction you go down when considering SEO, visual design, site architecture and copy.
SEO strategy
Before writing new copy for your new website, if one of your aims is to attract traffic from search engines such as Google, it really pays off to do some SEO keyword research in your industry to find out what your potential customers are currently searching for and the information they require. Writing copy and page titles with some keyword data behind it will pay off when Google starts crawling and indexing your new website.
Site structure
Before starting visual design and development, it is wise to give your website’s structure some heavy consideration. How will users access the information you want to include on the website? What will be included in the different menus? How many pages are required? What will the user experience look like? Having the answer to all these questions documented in a sitemap prior to development will ensure the design and development process moves smoothly.
If you think it’s time for your website to have a refresh, please feel free to get in touch with us. We would love to help.