3 Questions to Ask Before Designing a Website

Do you intend to create or redesign your website and entrust its creation to a web agency?

It's an excellent decision!

However, before embarking on such a project, take the time to think about the following 3 questions:

1) What is the strategy that I want to implement?

Creating a website without defining a strategy first is like beating a sword...

It's no use!

To properly define your strategy and make your website effective, ask yourself about it. first place on your objectives.

Why do you want to create or redo your website?

Increase your visibility to attract new prospects, sell online or simply improve your notoriety to retain your customers and recruit staff?

Perhaps for all these reasons at once?

In all cases, take the time to define as precisely as possible what motivates your project, what its purpose is, and to what extent it fits into your business vision.

Secondly, it is important to determine the results you want to achieve with your website and how you plan to get there.

How many additional calls or completed forms would you like to encourage per week, per month?

This question is essential to help you define your priorities.

Third element for reflection: who is your target clientele? Have you drawn up a portrait of your ideal customer (persona)?

What are their needs and the difficulties they encounter? What solution do you provide to their problems?

What are their expectations, their doubts, their objections?

Finally, how will your website help your ideal customer take action and buy your products or use your services?

Here is one last strategic point not to be overlooked: do you know your competition??

Identify your direct and indirect competitors, in your territory or outside your area of activity, and observe their online presence: what is the strong point of their website? What are their weaknesses?

Do you see any opportunities or gaps in your competitor that your website could fill?

2) What content will I publish?

Depending on your industry and your goals, you will need to determine the most effective and relevant types of content to pique the interest of your potential customers.

- Do you want to publish photos?

Where will you get quality photos?

Will you have to plan a photo session with a professional or purchase royalty-free photos?

- Are you adding a blog module?

Do you know what subjects to cover, what keywords to use in your field?

Are you going to write your text content yourself or delegate the optimized writing?

All these questions are essential

- Would you like to put videos online?

Perhaps you will need to delegate animation creation</a> or video editing to obtain convincing results?

Audio files, podcasts, digital books, online store, contact forms, submission, appointment booking, online training, etc. are all types of content to plan for in the future configuration of your website in order to properly assess the extent of the work to be done.

One piece of advice: don't hesitate to make a list of websites that inspire you to give you ideas for new content to develop!

3) How am I going to go about it concretely?

If you start from zero, here are some essential points on which you should not make hasty decisions:

- the choice of a strategic domain name,

- the selection of the web host,

- the creation of the logo,

- the choice of design based on a guide graphic standards,

- the budget to be planned for the project, including the marketing budget to publicize your products or services,

- the schedule for the delivery of the website, to be determined according to your real constraints,

- the person responsible for the internal project for the design of the website, even if the creation itself is entrusted to a digital marketing agency,

- the person responsible for updating and publishing new content, if you plan to manage it internally.

In any case, if you delegate the creation of your website to a agency, please note that it is reasonable to allow a period of 3 to 6 months for the delivery of a showcase site or an online store, depending on its size.

As you will have understood, the design of a website must be planned and structured before selecting a service provider.

This time for reflection will allow you to save time and energy, but above all to target your real needs and thus avoid spreading yourself too thin!

Author: Q14 Web + design + marketing agency

We are Q14, a team of Web + design + experts marketing which focuses on increasing the growth of sales, visibility and notoriety of the organizations we serve for 20 years.