So you’ve finally decided to pull the trigger and hire a Pleasanton website designer. Congratulations! Working with a website designer can be a very exciting time for your company, but to create the most effective website for your brand and your audience, you’ll want to do some serious brainstorming beforehand. In this article, we’ll lay out exactly what you need to bring to your website design meeting – no stress required!
Who Are You?
If your designer is building a website from scratch, rather than redesigning a previous one, you’ll need to provide lots of information about yourself and your company. Come prepared with answers to these questions:
- When was the company founded?
- What are the company’s values?
- What are your top products or services?
- What are some keywords that you think people might use to find you online, or search terms that describe your service/product offerings well?
- How do you differentiate from the competition?
- Do you have any competitors or comparable companies that we can look at for inspiration?
Gather as much information as possible ahead of time to ensure a smooth meeting. It may seem intimidating, but putting in the time now will make the process much easier.
Who is Your Audience? How Can Your Website Best Accommodate Them?
Once you’ve nailed down the basics, it’s time to think about your audience. You’ll need to decide how old they are, whether they live in a certain geographic area, and what their interests are likely to be.
Be sure that you understand who will most benefit from using your products or services before designing the website around them.
- Who is going to be the primary audience for your website?
- What age group are they likely in?
- Do you have a specific geographic target market, or will anyone from around the world be interested in what you’re offering?
- Do they have any interests that you know of?
- Is there anything else about the audience that is important?
- What are some keywords or search terms that describe your ideal customer’s age group, location, and/or other relevant information?
Remember to be as specific as possible when defining your target market. Once you’ve decided on a broad group, be sure to narrow down the demographics as much as possible. The more specific you are about who will see your website and why they should use it, the better suited your design is going to be for them – which means higher conversion rates!
Building Your Brand: What Do You Want or Need From Your Website?
Your new site should be built on a foundation of purpose – what does this website need to accomplish? For some companies, the goal may simply be providing information about products and services. Others might want their brand values reflected in every aspect of their online presence or need an e-commerce platform so they can sell directly to customers.
Whatever you want or need from your new site, make sure your Pleasanton website developer knows it! Your website is an extension of your brand and should reflect what makes you unique as a company.
Consider Looking for Examples of What you Like… Or Don’t Like
You’re looking for a responsive website design agency to help you build an online presence, so chances are that you spend lots of time on the web. Look at other sites that get it right and gather inspiration from what they do best – or look into websites that aren’t doing it well and think about how your site could improve upon their mistakes! Consider:
- Do you prefer a minimalistic, sophisticated look? Or would you rather go for a more playful, light-hearted aesthetic?
- Do you prefer lots of color and imagery or clean type in a single palette?
- Do your audience members tend to browse the web on their smartphones more than laptops/desktops? If so, responsive design may be important for your site.
- What types of things do they search for most frequently?
- How much information will you need to include on your site’s pages? Will this change as time goes on and the company expands its products/services lineup, or if it grows into new markets? Think about how a visitor might use each page. If there is too much content, they may get overwhelmed. If there isn’t enough, your website will seem unprofessional and sparse.
- Who is the competition? What do their websites look like? The more you know about what other responsive web design companies in Pleasanton are offering to clients, the better!
Are You Selling Products Directly From Your Website?
If so, you’ll need to think about how the checkout process will work within your website design. For instance:
- Will you use an ecommerce platform like Shopify or Squarespace?
- How many different products/tiers of pricing do you offer that each require their own shopping cart and payment options?
- Do you need to include different shipping options for each product, or will the same price be applied to all?
- What are your return policies? Will this differ between products/services that require special requests around color and size specifications, for example?
- How will you use your website’s blog to promote the sale of products?
There are ways that your Pleasanton website designer can weave information about new and existing products into the content on your site, so they’re not just hidden in a shopping cart or as an afterthought.
What’s the Big Picture?
Once you’ve laid out all this information , they’ll be able to get started on a design that will best represent you and your business goals. If the process is going well, feel free to ask lots of questions along the way!
So what are you waiting for? Get ready to work with your web designer by following these steps – it’ll be smooth sailing from there!
Talk to a Website Developer Today
Whether you need help with online marketing, or mobile app development, D-Kode Technology is here for you. When you have a digital marketing team on your side, you can outsource everything from SEO to social media management, and more! Give us a call at (925) 420-8320 today to get started. Or, better yet, easily schedule a free marketing consultation right now by clicking this link and filling out a short form.
