In case you missed it, we have been counting down our top 4 metrics for a successful website and website redesign. Starting at number four, Optimize Your Site For Social Media, then following it with the importance of Incorporating Appropriate and Relevant Content, and now leading up to our newest post: Customer Driven bulldog infographics Design!
One of the most important things your website needs to accomplish is connecting with your target audience. After all, what is the point of having a website if it doesn’t provide any value to your business? We have been discussing many ways to improve your current website to adhere to your target audience by adding relevant content, integrating social media, etc… The reason we mention those first is because they all factor in to our next metric: Customer Driven Design. It sounds simple and obvious, but you would be amazed at how many websites are designed without a deep and solid understanding of their target audience and how they navigate the web. To help you get a better understanding of what exactly a customer driven design means, we have offered up some special “tips.”
Tip 1. Understand your target audience. Before you begin the design of your new website, make sure you have a clear understanding of your goal or specific factors that will determine the “success” of your website. This will range from business to business, but it is a very important step before you even begin designing your website.
Tip 2. Make your website appealing to the eye. When choosing the graphics, iconography, and fonts that will be used, be sure to think back to your target audience. You want your website to be inviting, not confusing and hard to navigate. The color scheme should complement your content and be inline with your branding guidelines. This in return, will not shock your audience, and increase returning viewers.
Tip 3. Easy Navigation. On customer driven sites, the positing of critical site elements should not only be predictable, but should be high quality and unique. This means that the UI/UX should be usable and easy to understand.
Tip 4: Include a clear call to action. We cannot say this enough to our clients. If you spend all this time and effort to get your potential customers to your website, why would you not want to give them a way to interact with it? Your website needs to let them know what you want them to do. Think about how someone might respond to your products or service offerings.
Tip 5: Simplicity. Let the content speak for itself. Your site should immediately convey your focus. It should provide important details and clear calls to action supported by information that helps the user make a decision. Make your site easy to use. Resist the urge to incorporate hard-sell tactics, or long copy that provides too many options.
There is a lot of value in the above information. We feel that giving you a better understanding of what “customer driven” design style means will ultimately provide you with a better web site redesign. It is crucial that not only the designer but yourself as well understand the “guts” that are going into the site in order to optimize potential success.
We hope you have enjoyed our countdown the past few weeks! Stay tuned next week for our NUMBER ONE website metric!