We are the best website design agency in Bangalore or perhaps the best website design company in India.
What do we mean when we say that?
Well we may not be the best, but we definitely are ONE of the best. We are also a webflow professional partner. In this article we will be taking you through our approach to a website design and website development project.
Table of Contents
- Why do companies need a website?
- What are the steps involved in website design and website development?
- Effective Website Design and Development Tips!
- How can your website stand out?
Why do companies need a website?
Companies need websites for the following reason.
- Website will help you communicate to a potential customer, what the company does, how the product/service works, but most importantly what is in it for the customer and how to achieve it.
A website communicates with potential customers, investors, early adopters, potential employees etc. And based on what stage you are as an organization and who it is you are talking to, the website strategy and communication will change. For example Coca Cola needs a website for a reason and Apple needs a website for a different reason. Identifying who is your target audience and what it is they are looking for from you will help to design the communication. Based on the requirements companies even create microsites to communicate different things.
- Websites build social proof for your brand.
Your product or service may be rated 5 stars on Amazon or Yelp, but people will want to see your website to get more information about your brand.
Before making a purchase online, 87% of people conduct online research. People that are considering buying a product from you will likely end up on your website! Since prospective buyers are already looking for you online, including customer testimonials on your site is a great way to impress potential buyers and provide social proof.
Build a website that showcases your company culture to attract better talent.
- Websites can embed microsites to leverage on Marketing and niche SEO.
A microsite is an individual web page or small cluster of web pages that act as a separate entity for a brand. A microsite typically lives on its own domain, but some exist as a subdomain. While, it’s not recommended to use them solely for SEO. A well-thought out microsite can act as a great SEO strategy – without compromising the low-quality and need of the microsite.
When should one use microsites?
Microsites help when you want to show one key feature or offer of a product and sell.
- Launching a new product
- Generating targeted leads
- Targeting market by geography
- Standing out from the corporate brand
- Promoting events
- SEO for niche keywords
- Finally a website should answer “Why should someone care?” and “Why should someone trust you?”
👆 The most important question your website must answer for your target audience. Data, graphics, startling facts and lovely stories, animations are great, as long as they help answer those two questions. Websites are the backbone of many businesses. Trust is one of the key factors in a successful company. And websites should build trust. Website communication should give confidence to the visitor.
Also, Website should be a marketing tool, not an engineering nightmare.
What are the steps involved in website design and website development?
There are many steps involved in doing a website design and website development project. Not all of them are sequential as well. Once we identify the sitemap, functionalities and if there are any reference websites it will help to estimate the project.
ANALYSIS
The initial stage is all about understanding how a website can support this business. Who is visiting the website primarily and for what purpose?
Before we sit down to design the website we need to understand what the objectives are. What are we hoping to achieve through the website? After the research, we write this down and present it to the client.
We start this step by analyzing the market, competitors and identifying the brand’s current position. It is important to understand the business and industry for which we are creating the website.
Designers with the most success in our industry are business-aware.
During this stage we can also arrive at a budget considering the scope.
If we are using a template, which we rarely do, the overall cost comes down considerably. If you are a startup who is testing the market, an idea or product may be a better way to go. A template won’t really help you to stand out and the same template is going to be used by multiple people. Creating website assets considering the template restrictions is always a difficult task. But if you need something quick and inexpensive, template is the way. Website templates are not optimized for conversions.
RESEARCH
To understand the business, industry, trends – it is important to study them. The research will be in terms of what your competitors are doing, what is going on in the industry, and what is going to change in the near future and visual references.
Based on the project we will decide whether we need primary research as well. In primary research we will talk to your team, your customers, if conversion is one of the key goals. Speaking to the sales team and understanding the sales process is important. Figuring out the customer touchpoints and what role does the website play is very important to understand.
Researching other industries and drawing inspirations from them will help you to stand out. The best ideas come from outside your industry. We are people who, although we know little of your field, may be more likely to come up with breakthrough thinking; indeed, we may be carrying around, in our heads, the germ of the solution you’ve been searching for all along.
PERSONAS
Personas will allow us to better respond to each customer’s different challenges and highlight what your brand does better than its competitors.
Building trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You have to remain consistent in your messaging, understand your buyer personas and deliver on your promises over time.
When your prospects and customers trust you, they are more likely to buy from you. When you have their trust, you can also command a higher price and boost the lifetime value of each customer.
We need to put the website visitor first and design for them to build trust. When we don’t trust an organization or a person, it is generally because they put their own interests first. Don’t step into this trap. Helping website visitors builds trust, and if you can help your website visitors, you will put yourself in a great place to be considered as a trustworthy supplier to build a relationship with and to do business with.
How can your website build trust?
Trust is the pillar of all business relationships.
12 ways to earn trust on a website from the Orientation Marketing Agency
- Ensure The Website Is Https Secure
- Use High-Quality Images – Shoot
- Avoid Colloquialisms And Jargon In Website Copy
- Consistency Of Brand And Message
- Promote Testimonials And Case Studies
- Certifications And Awards
- Make Your Shortcoming Known
- Educate Rather Than Sell
- Include Your Clients Or Your Target Audience In Your Content
- Present Additional Business Information
- Personalisation
- Make Your Team Members Known
KEY INSIGHTS
Your website should stand out from the crowd and give a memorable experience and at the same time should serve the purpose. The key insights from the research is going to help us do exactly that.
Based on the research, we will define a series of key insights for your brand to improve the overall user experience. We will define the website structure, sitemap and navigation, presentation of business/product/service capabilities, and core product message.
We will present our research along with Stylescapes – it’s a rapid prototyping tool framework developed by Chris Do.
STYLESCAPES
We use stylescapes extensively in our projects. It helps us to visualize our ideas and it helps you to see what are some possibilities before we create them. We can essentially decode your words with Stylescapes.
If the visual branding of the brand is already in place and if it’s good, it will guide us. Else we will need to create assets which will go with the brand. This will be done carefully inline with the brand positioning.
Now you would imagine the next step is website designing. But it’s not. If you look at the best websites that do a brilliant job in communication there is one thing in common, great content flow and copywriting. That is the backbone of any website. Visual design makes the content on the website interesting. Most important aspect of the site: the written content.
During the research we will already start thinking about the possible interactions on the website.
WEBSITE STORYTELLING
If the storytelling on the website is good, it then becomes more than a place to generate leads or complete sales. It becomes an ambassador for the entire brand that represents not only what your company can do for individual clients but also how it can make them a part of the company’s mission to improve the world. If your website looks unprofessional, customers may think that your business is too. Yikes!
1. Visual Storytelling
What it is: Strategic use of visual elements to reinforce your branding and create a narrative for readers to follow.
Why it’s important: Visual design is one of the first things your viewers notice and sets the tone for your site through the imagery it creates. Illustrations can also tell a story.
2. Content Storytelling – Content Writing – Copywriting – SEO
What it is: Use of on-site copy across web pages, articles, and marketing materials to communicate with your audience.
Why it’s important: On-site text is one of the primary mediums through which designers communicate with readers. Effective web design relies on clear, focused web copy.
3. Video Storytelling
What it is: Leveraging the engaging, high-impact nature of video content to share your brand’s story and connect with your market.
Why it’s important: Video content is an eye-catching way to connect with readers and capture their attention beyond what simple words or static imagery can manage.
4. Design Storytelling
What it is: Use of website design elements such as animations, triggers, and layout to capture a reader’s attention and provide implicit information about your brand.
Why it’s important: Design relies on the concept of “show, don’t tell.” Design-based storytelling leverages strategic site elements to engage users and invite them in your brand story.
Let’s take a look at Dunshire Production’s Website.
VISUAL DESIGN
Next step would be to design the website. Here we define the style for imagery style, overall look and feel, typography, color palette and the layout. Required visual assets are created for the sections and pages.
Here we start with simple layouts using old school paper and pen and then make it a reality on any design software. We usually skip the extended low fidelity wireframing as it hardly made sense to anyone. Clients usually like to see something more real once we have the content structure ready. And with an approval on the stylescape we already have an idea how things are going to come together. Visual content is known to increase clicks, engagement, and revenue.
Why is Visual Appeal important for a website?
Visual appeal can – more than anything – attract attention. This is key to getting visitors engaged with your website. We like to look at pretty things and if we have the choice, we always prefer an attractive design or image over an ugly or neutral one.
Visual appeal is an extremely important aspect of web design – particularly when it comes to building that first impression when a person lands on a website and a lasting brand affinity with your visitors. Although, at the same time, it’s important not to neglect the basics.
It takes 2.6 seconds for eyes to settle on key areas of a web page and first impressions matter in websites. And it takes only 17ms to form an opinion about a website.
Users love simple and familiar designs – Why websites need to make a great first impression
The visual design is a way to communicate and appeal to the site’s users. Get it right, and it can determine the site’s success. Get it wrong, and you’re just another web address.
ANIMATIONS
With the introduction of Lottie files we now can introduce after effect animations without slowing down the website. We are now also exploring JS animations which makes the website more interactive.
Website is one the few faces of your brand and that face expressions may build or break trust. Even though we cannot overlook visual appeal, it is very important.
WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT
We use and love webflow for website development.
All the assets we created need to be optimized before uploading to the server. We use tinypng or bulkresizephotos to optimize images.
We also make sure design wise the assets are optimized for mobile view and different screen sizes as well. Since most of the traffic comes from mobile devices, we really need to take care of how the website pages and sections are getting displayed on a mobile screen. We cannot just adapt what is done for a desktop screen and call it a day.
TECHNICAL SEO
Technical SEO is the process of ensuring that a website meets the technical requirements of modern search engines with the goal of improved organic rankings. Important elements of technical SEO include crawling, indexing, rendering, and website architecture.
A flat URL structure makes it easy for Google and other search engines to crawl 100% of your site’s pages.
Why is SEO important for any website?
SEO and user experience (UX) work hand in hand with each other. Building trust organically is how SEO helps your business.
A lot of brands do the website first and then try to make it SEO friendly later. Well you can do that, but it’s better if you start thinking about SEO while creating the website itself. Even though SEO is an ongoing process, good keyword research and competitor analysis will give us some insights on what needs to be done. I might be over simplifying SEO here, but this is a good starting point. SEO writing is important for any website now.
For SEO content has to be structured in a specific way to signal expertise and authoritativeness to the algorithms.
It’s not just about how well-written and thorough individual articles are; it’s also about how different articles and pages on your site support one another.
WEBSITE TESTING
Things we test in a our website design and development
- Responsive design
- Favicon
- 404 Page
- Optimum use of Carousels
Carousels work best when they contain interesting and relevant content that is presented with a clear context. If content wouldn’t engage a user outside of a carousel—placing it in a carousel won’t make it perform any better. If you must use a carousel, prioritize content and ensure that each slide is sufficiently relevant that a user would want to click through to the subsequent slide. - Page loading speed
- Whether Navigation is clear
- Clear typography – kerning, tracking, and leading
- Copy check
- No conflicting fonts
- Scannable content – Creating scannable content has arguably never been more important than it is today.By accommodating the modern online reader and presenting information in a streamlined, visually appealing way, you can improve the reader’s experience.
This technique is also effective for preventing “cognitive overload,” which can drain a reader’s mental energy. The end result is happier readers who spend more time on your site and who are more likely to convert. - Right amount of white space
- Answer visitor questions
- Logo – always at the top left corner
- Relevant Imagery – Real images on your home page can enhance a visitor’s first exposure to your brand.
- Responsive image sizing
- Metadata
- Image or file compression
- Minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript
- Browser caching
- Privacy policy
- Image Alt Texts
- Browser Compatibility
- Link Checker
LAUNCH
Websites we have designed, developed and launched.
When we design and develop a website it will clearly show
- Who you help as a brand
- Problems you solve
- How you do it
- Proof that you have done for others
- Pricing
- How to reach out to you
Your website has been launched! Now what could be some ways to promote the launch?
Ways to promote your website?
- Share it on Social.
You probably already have an audience of raving fans on social media – make sure they see your brand new website!
With more than 500 million users and 10 million job listings, LinkedIn is a professional force to be reckoned with. Make sure your business profile is up to date and contains a link to your website. Link to your website on your personal profile as well. - Send out emails!
One very simple way to announce the launch of a business’ new website is to send a direct message to everyone in your database. Let them know when your site goes live. Why you changed your site. Was it to better serve your customers?
This can be done through e-mail marketing. One of the most common and popular email marketing campaigns are Email Newsletters. As a small business you can use an email newsletter to provide knowledge about your upcoming website! - Try a Wait-list Launch Strategy.
One of the best ways to announce the launch of a new website is to create a coming soon page. A coming soon page helps you build excitement pre-launch and it gives visitors a preview of what your site is all about.
Create a landing page dedicated to the launch of your new website. The landing page could highlight all of the important content you want people to see and drive them to click through to other pages of your website. - Make a blog or video about it.
It is really important that you think about the content that you want your visitors to see during your website launch. Do you want them to understand more about your business and brand story, or is it more important that they view your products straight away?
When launching a new website, make sure to write a blog post about it! Not only is this great for SEO purposes but this is also an opportunity to share your brand’s story and go over some of the key improvements that come with the launch of the new site. - Start Networking!
Find people and organisations you wish to connect with and introduce yourself. Strike up a conversation!
It’s important to start adding a personal connection to the launch – helps incite enthusiasm to make the launch successful.
WEBSITE MAINTENANCE
If your website isn’t working properly or is out of date, you may lose out on significant opportunities, such as new leads and sales.
Since 94% of first impressions relate to web design, people may come away with a poor first impression of your business if your site isn’t up to date and functional. Additionally, if you’re an ecommerce business and your ecommerce functionality fails, people won’t be able to purchase your products.
Regular website maintenance helps prevent these issues.
Website maintenance refers to the tasks required to keep your website functioning properly and up to date. It involves regularly checking your website for issues, correcting any issues, and making updates.
Backing up your website can save you from losing a huge amount of time and money if something goes wrong with your site.
At least once a quarter, make sure all your forms and your checkout process are working properly. Ideally marketing department should own the website.
Effective Website Design and Development Tips
There are few basics which every website needs to follow to be effective.
- Make your website mobile responsive.
It’s true that over 50% of searches online now come from a mobile device. This is a no brainer today since it is only going to increase. - Keep above the fold very relevant: Keep your contact information accessible.
If your business depends on people being able to contact you or call your sales team, put that information where they can find it easily. - Make it easy to navigate. Nobody wants to come to a website and get lost. Keep the navigation easily accessible and provide breadcrumbs if required.
- Keep your pages uncluttered. The easier it is to consume the website content the longer the customer is going to stay.
- Make sure the content is relatable. Inexperienced content marketers focus on creating content that’s focused on their business and how great they are. This content ignores visitors’ desires, goals, fears, frustrations, and problems. Make sure your website copy is customer-oriented.
- Respect the need for speed. Short load times give customers the information they want when they want it. If your site can’t deliver, a competitor’s site will.
- Have a call to action. You gave the required information, now tell them what is the next step.
- Keep your design simple. Don’t let the design over power the information you want to share. There are times when complex designs serve a purpose, but make sure you know when you want to use it.
- Incorporate SEO best practices.
Hubspot shared these guidelines for good web design:
- Simplicity: Eliminate unnecessary design elements and make your site easy to understand.
- Hierarchy: Arrange your site so visitors naturally gravitate to the most important elements.
- Navigability: Make your site’s navigation simple and obvious.
- Consistency: The look and feel of your site should be uniform throughout.
- Accessibility: Your site should be compatible with all devices (mobile, tablet, etc.).
- Conventionality: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use elements and design that people are familiar with.
- Credibility: Be upfront about your intent and your pricing.
- User-centricity: Gather user responses to all site elements to get the best UX.
How can your website stand out?
- Show The World Who You Are Through Creative Bios
- Take A Unique Stand
- Showcase Likable And Relatable Video
- Provide Insight And Inspiration
- Keep Your Website Content Fresh
- Don’t Use Stock Photos
- Display Examples And Metrics
- Adjust Your Website Menus And Navigation Titles
- Make It About Them
How long do users stay on your website?
That’s the average time spent on a website. And that’s how long you have to capture someone’s attention on your website.
If you haven’t generated interest in 15 seconds, then you probably aren’t going to. A high bounce rate indicates a poorly constructed site.
Why do users leave a website?
- Visitors Leave Your Site When They Don’t Get What They Expect
- Visitors Leave Your Site When It Isn’t Usable
- Visitors Leave Your Site When They Don’t Know What to Do
- Visitors Leave Your Site If They Suspect You Aren’t Being Genuine
- Visitors Leave Your Site When You Fail to Impress or Inspire
(CrazyEgg)
A poor design that gives too many options will significantly lower your sales and increase your bounce rate.
According to Yoast, bounce rate has three different interpretations:
1. The quality of the page is low. There’s nothing inviting to engage with.
2. Your audience doesn’t match the purpose of the page since they won’t engage with your page.
3. Visitors have found the information that they were looking for.
Here’s an example of a few industry standards from Kissmetrics:
Looking for a Website Designer?
Let’s face it. If you have any bad website design elements on your site, it is going to affect your business. We, at Everything.Design help companies build great websites. By taking a hands-on role in your website’s design process, we guarantee that you’ll get a website that meets or exceeds your expectations. Your website is your 24 Hours a day sales rep, invest in that one person.
