The team at Websites Design LA has questioned its staff and come up with a few pieces of well-chosen advice on how to plan a website design. When you are building your first website, probably on something like WordPress or Shopify, it doesn’t really matter how you plan your website because you can change it. However, when you have a legitimate business, when you need things like accounts, online tools, data tracking, and so forth, you need a plan for your website. You wouldn’t build a house without blueprints, and you shouldn’t build a website without a plan.
Always Start Small and Basic
Build your plan from the most simple premise possible. Start with the skeleton of an idea and add layers until you have a fully working website. Try to keep things scaled down. It is very easy for a few pages to turn into hundreds of interconnected pages, many of which rely on others, and it quickly becomes a mess. When you build your plan, ask yourself, can we do it easier? Can we do it more simply? Can we reuse pages but dynamically swap out content?
Navigation is Your Biggest Hurdle
If you already have experience planning websites, then you will understand how navigation can become a big problem. Getting people from one page to another seems fine until you realize that most users will want to navigate back, will want to skip ahead, and some will have no idea where they want to go.
Different people will find themselves on the same page but will have different needs depending on their goals and desires. When you consider all the factors, you want to add a big panel of page links to each area, but you cannot. You need to funnel your traffic and try to control their movement.
Funneling Web Traffic
As people work their way through your website, ask yourself what they want when they land on each page, and then find a way to funnel them to where they desire. This becomes a lot easier when you purposefully funnel people through your website. Try to convince them of where they want to go, and perhaps structure your pages so that people’s options become more limited as people move closer to buying. Being original is nice but is not necessary. Sometimes, funneling people means taking some known roads they have taken on other (similar) websites.
With that in mind, you should keep your website intuitive. Don’t try to come up with your own symbols for things like “Back” or “Settings” and such because it will just annoy people. Stick to what people know and they will find your website far easier to use in the long run.
Don’t Copy Other Websites
Hundreds of websites have tried to copy what Amazon does, but it doesn’t work. Many blogs have tried to copy the Wikipedia design and have also met with failure. You need to focus on what your target audience wants, and then offer them the fastest way to get what they want with the least amount of hindrance. Remember that branding should be subtle unless you are selling a service and that the user experience matters more than SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
A Strong Team of Experts
Even the best-laid plans can result in disaster if you do not have the correct team around you to help you. Get in touch with Websites Design LA and start planning your website today. Allow the designers to have input on what will and will not work. Understand your goals, work within your budget, and build something that you and the team at Websites Design LA can be proud of.
