What's the role of your Website?

What's the role of your Website?


Designing a great website – A primer.


A great design starts with a great purpose. Let’s first answer the question “What’s the role of your Website”?

Digital is an important element of any business growth story. Entrepreneurs form their company and immediately want their Digital platforms like Website / LinkedIn / FB / Twitter account to be in place. Among various Digital elements, this blog will focus on the Website, its role and what constitutes a successful one? Let’s answer the two questions.

What’s the role of a website?

Is it to have a digital identity, provide information to seekers (your Customers / Employees / Potential hire / Vendors), or is it to grow the business by generating leads, transact business? As you notice, it can be (m)any or all and more. Having this clarity is important as the user can be different. What a customer may look for in a Website is different for what a potential hire is looking for.  A customer may want to know the product or service options, its functionality, benefits, price, warranty, store nearby, testimony and much more while a potential hire will want to know the company’s Culture, Leadership, Growth Opportunities, Clients, Offices etc.

Well. How do we then design one? Should we pack all elements? Why are then companies offering to create a website less than $200? What comes at $200? What purpose does that serve?



Some of the common mistakes that people do while designing a website

v  Often websites are designed for self-gratification by the entrepreneurs. It turns out in a way to be the Digital visiting card of an entrepreneur. To tell the world, who are we and what do we do?

v  Usually websites are designed with an Inside-Out perspective by the promoter, “I have something to tell”.

v  Website designers are evaluated by the amount they charge.

v  Websites have no linearity with the brand. The brand colors and themes aren’t reflected in the website.

v  Sometimes websites are an eyesore. They need not be aesthetically pleasing but cannot be an eyesore.

v  Websites are not easy to navigate. There’s no flow.

v  Some websites don’t have all their frames linked well. They jump incoherently or give you a standard excuse of technical failure for their behavior.

v  The websites don’t provide opportunity to capture the visitors profile. It could be a potential business enquiry or an employment enquiry.  

Here are some of the pointers in designing a great website

v  Create a website that is designed around the user / visitor needs. This calls for an Outside-In thinking. Here one needs to imagine like a customer and create an experience to meet all his information needs. The same needs to be repeated for a potential hire, existing employee, vendor and create frames accordingly.

v  Always focus on the customer’s needs. Design it to serve his/her information needs. This may result in getting all other aspects of other users also right through this approach.

v  One need to balance the technical ability of the website with the aesthetic elements.

v  The creative aspect of the website is paramount. It would be good to keep it aesthetically pleasing or else become redundant.

v  Website should be intuitive, easy to understand and navigate. A ten-year-old and a 70-year-old should be able to navigate without anyone’s assistance.

v  It would be useful for the user to return to your website when he/she wants. Hence ease of access and navigation, along with right content would secure return visits. The average attention span on a page is 8 seconds and if the user doesn’t find what he/she wants, they would search elsewhere. When your user is there on the website, all his/her questions must be answered.

v  40% of the customers leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. Make sure that your website loads quickly.

v  Content is the King. One must bring in all elements that makes one to decide “Yes, I should go with their product or service, I belong to this kind of place, etc.”.

v  Keep the content fresh and flowing

v  The color themes on the website should be same as the brand identity and its colors.

v  The website friendliness is an indication of the company’s customer centricity and friendliness in their business model. Hence designing a website with the customer in mind is always at the forefront of success.  

v  It is good to source images from image libraries and have images that communicate and express. Pictures tell a story of 1000 words. The images need to be relevant.

v  Successful websites also have a video of the Promoter / CEO, giving a perspective of their journey and what are they all about. If posting a video is a choice made, one needs to give periodic updates to that video content and keep It refreshed.

v  Web analytics is an important source to analyze the traffic to your website. Who are my visitors and where do they come from, which device did they use, how long did they stay, what sections did they see, did they sign up for mailers, etc. There are many service providers. Google leads this space.

v  Optimize the design for multi-platform and multi-screening that enables accessing the site through any Digital gadgets for a great user experience. Google says, 61% of the users are unlikely to return to a mobile site, if they had trouble accessing it. 91% of people in UAE, 88% in Singapore access their internet on phone. So it is important to ensure consistent experience depending on the % of internet access through mobile phones in your part of the world.

v  Protect your website from hackers.

v  Have a section for users to fill in minimalistic information to contact them. Make sure you reach out and take it forward.

v  Finally, an analogy: Website is like a room. The more they are ventilated and airy, the more one is likely to stay.

While the above suggestions are not exhaustive, it can serve as a primer for those creating a website for the first time.

Go ahead, make your website that drives business, provides all information and communicates who you are. A good website is a starting point and should be an important element of Digital Strategy.

K. Subramanian.

07/06/2018

(The author is the founder of Drawing Board Advisory and Consulting Services, based at Bengaluru. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at subbu@drawing-board.in)


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