A website is the central marketing hub of any business, when the website is built the right way. Many business owners think a website is just an online brochure. Many of those websites perform like a brochure stuck on a billboard.
For a website to be a driving force of a company’s goals, planning and best practices need to be followed.
We don’t provide overnight websites. We take time to plan, think and follow best practices. We use the proven StoryBrand framework to position your company as the guide and the your customer as the hero. Here are some examples of StoryBrand websites we’ve designed over the years.
Here’s a short breakdown covering the different steps it takes to build a website the right way.
Discovery
The discovery process is key in finding information used in the structure and content of your website. This process uncovers what keywords are important to target, how to group different products or services, and the importance of service area pages.
Here are the three parts to the discovery process:
- Competitor research
- General market research
- Keyword research
Site Architecture
With information from the discovery process, we can build a sitemap of the website. This will organize the different products/services, articles, and other pages.
A clearly thought out website structure is important for SEO and user experience. You’ve probably been on a site where the structure just does not make sense. We want to avoid that for your website visitors.
This process will provide a clear roadmap for the initial website build and beyond.
UX Design & Wireframing
Each page of your website has a unique goal. The content layout of that page will either guide users towards that goal or distract them from it.
The home page and product pages are going to use the StoryBrand framework but the about us page and location page require a different layout.
The wireframes created in this process are the blueprints of your website. Different blueprints are like different rooms in a house.
Outlining & Copywriting
Copywriting is the art and science of writing persuasive content. It should invite your customers into a story about how they can overcome their problem and win the day. Good content will position your company as the guide who is providing the customer with a plan to overcome their obstacle.
Too many websites are filled with boring jargon. Your website needs to clearly communicate with your customers about how you can help them win at life.
When business owners write their own website content, they tend to get overly technical and bore their customers with unimportant facts. It’s best to have content written by professional copywriters.
UI Design
Making your website look nice (with colors, shadows, fonts) is usually what people think of as web design. But UI design is one small part of the overall process to a successful website. It’s important to make sure the website feels like the company’s brand.
Responsive Development
After the UI design is approved, development begins. The website needs to look and function great on desktop and mobile.
Following best practices in the development process is important for SEO, page loading performance, and accessibility.
Usually when issues occur during the website development process it’s because one of the previous steps (site architecture, UX design, UI design, copywriting, etc) are skipped or attempted to do at the same time.
Following this structured approach helps keep your website project organized, on time, and following best practices.
Optimization & Launch
It’s important your website is loading as fast as possible. While most of the performance is handled by using best practices with development, there are optimizations that improve performance further.
Here are the three parts to the launch & optimization process:
- Optimize website for page loading
- Test website on different devices
- Set up Google Analytics website tracking
Management & Ongoing Marketing
After the launch of your website, we’ll discuss future business goals, marketing analytics, and other marketing objectives.
