In theory, our guide talks about the 6️⃣ key elements of a successful website. In practice, it's a bit different. 😉 All the steps consist of a series of smaller and larger tasks, and each of them can influence the success of the design. What aspects should you take care of so that the end result doesn't disappoint?
1️⃣ Research user needs. What is user experience (UX) design?
Before even starting work on the graphics layer of the website, you can make two mistakes. The first is to completely ignore the fundamental question:
Who will use the website and for what purpose❓
The second is to assume that you know the answer better than the potential users. 😉
💡 The only proper and effective way to find out what your users need is UX research, which will form the basis for designing a clear structure and site navigation. This will ensure that users can easily find the content they're interested in, and that they will have a positive browsing experience.
📍 UX design in a nutshell 👇
Main task: researching user needs.
Main risk: not meeting user expectations.
Who can help you: a software house, freelance UX designers.
2️⃣ Create the graphic design of the website. Details matter!
Technology keeps moving forward, but it's not hard to find websites that seem completely stuck in the past. A modern website should have an attractive and appealing design that will encourage users to take specific actions.
Consistent graphic design, prominent CTA buttons, and highlighting the most important content – all these elements have an impact on the user experience. And this has a direct effect on conversions.
📍 Web design in a nutshell 👇
Main task: attracting the attention of the user, creating a positive experience.
Main risk: creating an ugly website that will put users off.
Who can help you: a software house, freelance graphic designers and web designers.
3️⃣ Make sure you have the right content. Content is king! 👑
The title of an essay by Bill Gates – Content is king – has become iconic in content marketing. And for good reason! After all, the success of a website depends on what content you have and how you present it on your site.
You can attract potential customers with unique and valuable content. This is part of what's known as your inbound marketing strategy. A well-designed CTA will then encourage them to go to a subpage with a product or service description. This is where the language of benefits will work perfectly.
💡 Remember that the type of content, style and language – like the design of the website – should meet the needs of the users.
There's one more important issue: the trust of potential customers. You will gain this by putting information on the website proving your skills and experience as well as the satisfaction of existing customers.
💡 Make sure that the users don't have to spend too long searching for this information. 🙂
📍 Content design in a nutshell 👇
Main task: bringing value to users.
Main risk: mismatched content that doesn't interest the user.
Who can help you: copywriting agencies, freelance copywriters, proofreaders.
4️⃣ Remember the bots. How do you optimize the website for SEO? 🧐
The first three points focused on the users, now it's time for... the bots! 🤖
Google doesn't provide many specifics about how the search engine algorithms work. The tips are limited to some basic information about the need to create unique and valuable content.
However, there are a few elements that are known to be highly important for your website's positioning. These include: keywords/phrases, headings, descriptions, meta tags and alt text for images.
However, there's a common pitfall when it comes to keywords: texts that are artificially stuffed with SEO phrases are said to be over-optimized. In fact, the entire site can be over-optimized – this would have produced great results a few years ago, but today it's an unwanted side effect. Instead of improving a website's ranking, it definitely lowers it. So, go for unique, valuable content, and not the excessive repetition of keywords.
For this reason, it's important to use common sense when optimizing the website for SEO.
📍 Website optimization in a nutshell 👇
Main task: improving the visibility of the website in the search engine.
Main risk: over-optimizing the website.
Who can help you: SEO agencies, software houses, freelancers specializing in SEO copywriting.
5️⃣ Don't ignore the technical aspects. A user-friendly website
The technical aspects have a huge impact on the success of the points discussed above. For example: website responsiveness and loading speed have an impact on SEO, and regular plugin updates and website administration affect the user experience. What technical features of the website should you take care of? Take a look at our checklist to find out. 👇
A user-friendly website is...
📌 responsive. By making the website mobile-friendly, you will improve the user experience. Remember that most of the traffic on your website will probably come from mobile devices.
📌 fast. Users will abandon a website that takes too long to load. So, you have to optimize the website loading speed, taking into account the size and format of the images, among other things.
📌 secure. An SSL certificate secures all the data that you see on the website, e.g. when you're logged in to a banking website.
📌 administered. In managing the website, it's important to analyse the current situation and react to any problems, changes, trends and user needs.
📌 updated. Regular plugin and system updates as well as ongoing modifications are essential to help eliminate problems and errors that disrupt the functioning of the website. If the website isn't maintained, it becomes hard to use it. It also poses a risk to the security of user and company data.
📍 The technical aspects in a nutshell 👇
Main task: a high-performance, secure and up-to-date website.
Main risk: a slow, old, website that's frustrating for users.
Who can help you: a software house specializing in the language in which your website is written. We recommend an ongoing subscription, due to the option of regular technical consultations.
6️⃣ Keep developing the website. Analysis and monitoring 📈
After completing the first five steps, the site is ready. However, this doesn't mean that your work is over. 😉
Now it's time to monitor the performance and track user behaviour on the website. Analytics tools (with Google Analytics at the forefront) and heatmaps are used for this purpose. Regularly monitoring this data and performing SEO audits gives you invaluable information about what needs to be changed on your website.
📍 Website analysis and monitoring in a nutshell 👇
Main task: regular user experience testing.
Main risk: not adapting the website to meet the changing needs of users.
Who can help you: SEO agencies (analysis and monitoring), software house (analysis and monitoring, implementing changes).
A successful website in 6️⃣ big (and lots of small) steps
And that's it! Remember that the tasks we described above are set out in chronological order, not in terms of priority. There are no more or less important points – they all contribute to the success of the website, and they are often also closely dependent on each other.
To repeat the key principle: designing a website requires the ability to put yourself in the user's shoes – to anticipate their needs, requirements, problems and habits. With this principle in mind, you can go ahead with the steps we have described.
6️⃣ steps to a successful website 👇
Research user needs.
Create the graphic design of the website.
Make sure you have good, valuable content for your users.
Optimize the website for SEO.
Pay attention to technical aspects such as responsiveness and security.
Regularly monitor and analyse the performance of the website.
Psst. In the text, we've outlined who can help you implement each task. Feel free to contact us about the points where you see the words "software house". 😉