Loading...Web designing means combining skills with expertise to make the web presence of an online business effective so as to get the right response from the customers. Every web design effort should lead towards a common goal. To combine all these elements, a designer needs to think strategically. A strategic design can help a business in standing out from the crowd in less possible time.
Understanding The Strategic Design
In a strategic design, every web design aspect carries a reflection of the main organizational goals. The user interface is not just designed to look appealing and accessible, but it should help in accomplishing the main organizational objectives.
In the designing world, several designs fail, the reason is the lack of match between the web design and the main business objectives. A designer has to follow certain trends; however, the trends and styles should be used intelligently according to the main business theme. For example, a blog needs high readability rather than just the style. For a promotional website, there is a need of right graphics, instead of readability. Strong aesthetic sense is needed there.
How To Implement The Strategic Design?
To get started with a strategic web design, there are 6 steps to follow. To know more, read the lines below!
Goal Setting- The First Step
Before getting started with any web design project, It’s important to know what the main objectives of business are and what does the owner want to achieve from the website. Being a designer, discuss that with your client so that the results could come as expected.
Every website might have certain function to perform, like spreading awareness, selling products, entertaining visitors, or offering services. A web design should focus on the main function whether it’s being performed or not.
Audience Identifying – The Second Step
The functioning of the website is greatly dependent on whether the targeted audience is rightly identified or not and the design is made accordingly or not. The factors that could affect the web design include
- Age
- Gender
- Profession
- Knowledge level
A website that targets youngsters needs a different web design approach, compared to the serious business based website. Usability is the most important factor for the audience that is not technically expert. It’s not just about the bigger details; little things like font size, font style are also influenced by the targeted audience.
Brand Image Building – The 3rd Step
Several things can help in building the brand image at the designing step. Glossy buttons and reflective floors may work well for a small-scaled website, but these don’t help the brand image. A web design should have the feel of the brand to leave an impression over the site visitors.
Design Decisions – The 4th Step
After establishing the main business objectives and identifying the targeted audience, the next step is to decide about the design elements, tools, and techniques used to come up at the expected design.
If the main objective of the website is to get subscribers, the About Us option should be clear for the visitors to find that out, the registration button should be highlighted with right use of colors, and the registration process should be made smoother. These things will help in increasing the number of visitors signing up with the website.
Results Measuring – The 5th Step
After deploying the website, measuring the results is of utmost importance. The performance of the website can be judged by testing it and knowing whether it’s helping in achieving the goals or not. Response of the targeted audience in the form of comments, RSS feeds, high number of subscribers, all can help in measuring the performance of the website.
Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) – The 6th Step
It’s a Japanese philosophy that revolves around continuous improvement brought by taking small steps. This strategy can be adopted while designing the website because not a single version is declared as final version at that stage. For a website, it’s possible to bring improvements gradually while the website is on server. The main objective of the improvement should be to make the website look more functional for the targeted audience. After measuring the results, it’s easy to identify the problem areas and the work can be started to make the design functioning perfectly.
Have you clearly understood what does it mean by a strategic web design and how could it be accomplished? It’s all in the best interests of a business and also brings good repute for a website designer. Think about it and follow the steps given in the lines above, it will surely help you in reaching a highly functional strategic web design.