What elements should website design include?
Website design refers to the process of creating a strategic, fully-functioning and aesthetic website. It combines both strategic and design thinking and there’s more to it than the obvious part of creating stunning visuals.
If you are wondering... Besides the obvious visual part of website design, what elements go into the process of website design? What are the benefits of a professionally designed website?
Let me walk you through the key elements of what a strategically and professionally designed website design includes besides creating stunning visuals. We’re stripping back the curtain and looking at the groundwork that goes into the process. Each element is supplemented with actionable steps to enable you to have a hands-on approach for your own website.
It’s not a requirement
As a side note, you might be debating whether you should hire a website designer or DIY. To be frank a professionally designed website is not a requirement. It's not something that you will be fined for not having. Yet, everyone who’s serious about their strategic goals (business or personal) turns to professional website designers and there’s a very good reason for that.
Website designers introduce structure into the process that’s otherwise chaotic and messy. They incorporate all the elements of a strategically and professionally designed website into their process (refer below) and there’s many more benefits like their expertise, professionalism and time saving benefits but we won’t get into those now. Put simply, web designers know the game and ensure that your website ticks all the boxes.
A professionally designed website will be your most useful tool for achieving your strategic goals so let's dive into the elements that go into the process of website design.
1. Getting your foundation right
When designing a website it’s so important to first get the foundational blocks of your website right. And for that you need to remember that websites are not meant to be just pretty. Let me explain what I mean - aesthetics matter A LOT and it’s being shown time and time again in the statistics that people love marveling at beautifully designed websites for the simple fact that we like looking at beautiful things. That’s not what I mean.
What I mean is that your audience isn’t ONLY looking to admire the visual appearance of your website. Instead, they’re looking to gain something from you. It’s an overlooked truth and a very fundamental idea to keep in mind when thinking about website design - your website first needs to fill a strategic role and only then an aesthetic role.
This is the part that usually gets mixed up. Clients tend to focus on the visual elements - colors, fonts, layouts, images and so on. This often leads to neglecting or forgetting about the strategic goals you were trying to achieve with your website in the first place. So remember - your strategic goals are the foundation to your website and the visuals follow after.
Applying this in practice doesn’t have to be difficult. When working with a website designer you’ll see that the process starts with defining and developing a website strategy before thinking about the visual appearance of your website. Your website strategy will define the foundation of your website and an action plan on how your content will direct your visitors towards your goals. After all, your website is merely a tool for achieving your strategic objectives like selling products, creating a community, promoting services, showcasing your work, organizing a wedding or any other goal. A strategically designed website places your strategic goals at the center of your website design, leading the audience to the desired outcome while impressing them with stunning visuals.
Put it in action: Define your business/personal goals, your target audience and your strategic website goals. Define your website strategy.
2. Shaping your user experience
Visiting a website is an experience. A well-designed website will shape your visitor’s experience to make it seamless and intuitive, leading them to the desired outcome with ease. Great user experience doesn't just happen, it needs to be created.
If you think about it from your own experience as a website user, the importance of your experience becomes apparent. You encounter and use websites every day without even noticing it; from a morning commute bus schedule to buying groceries for dinner to browsing Pinterest for fun. Websites are all around and they shape your everyday life. It’s only when a website doesn't function the way you’d like it to or when something is obviously wrong, only then you start to consciously think about your experience and at that point it’s negative. This tells us a very important thing - user experience matters a lot.
When everything works the way it is intended, a website is an experience that goes mainly unnoticed. As ironic as that sounds, that's kind of the point. You want your website visitors to not actively have to think about how your website functions. You want them to marvel at the beauty of your website and swiftly move on to the reason they visit the website in the first place, your strategic goal.
Shaping an amazing user experience needs to be incorporated into virtually every aspect of your website design. Good or great user experience has the power to boost virtually all elements of your website including your credibility, trustworthiness and reliability while increasing the overall perception of your brand. At the same time, bad user experience can have devastating effects on attracting or maintaining visitor’s attention.
Put it in action: What is your website user experience like, is it seamless and unnoticeable? You can ask a friend to go through your website and act as someone from your target audience. Ask them to go through it on their own and then enquire about their experience. If it wasn’t seamless then you have work to do - any stumbles they had along the way are your improvement points.
3. Creating consistency
An important point to consider when thinking about your online presence is creating consistency in your visual appearance (think colors, logo, fonts etc.) as well as your tone and your message. How do you do that? By having your branding in order. Branding and website design go hand-in-hand and you can't have a website without branding. Consistency creation forms part of every aspect of your website design and all other business touchpoint design.
You could argue that the main purpose of branding is to create consistency. A thoughtfully designed brand identity that is applied on your website also sets the scene for all other touch points of your business. In a way consistency is born on your website but it continues living in all other marketing channels, online or offline.
From a more practical point of view, an expertly designed website will integrate all your marketing efforts in one place. It will serve as a central hub to house your brand, to integrate your social media presence (across all platforms) and bring in or link any other third-party applications under one “roof” thus creating consistency.
So why does consistency matter? Consistency in your own presence ensures memorability, recognition and trustworthiness of your brand and your business. Only through constantly seeing the same message and the same visuals of a brand we start to trust it, recognize it and memorize it. And that’s the most important takeaway - recognition, memorability and trust influence your audience’s actions. It’s the difference between your audience jumping to buy your product/service or continuing to scroll further.
In summary, your website has the power to spark your brand’s consistency and facilitate it across all other touchpoints. That way, your audience’s experience stays the same no matter which touchpoint they land on and it makes them want to work with you. Make sure you capitalize on this opportunity and ensure that your branding and website design work in unison to create and nurture consistency.
Put it in action: Critically evaluate whether your branding and website design create consistency for your online presence. Grab the free Website Design & Branding Checklist to understand what are key elements of a strong and strategic brand identity & website and to ensure your brand identity and website ticks all the boxes (hint, consistency is only one of the criteria). Plus, if you want to understand the key functional and strategic requirements of a well-designed brand identity and website and put yours to the test claim your free copy now!
4. Showcasing to your intended audience
Different websites will have different strategic goals and intended audiences. For businesses the intention is to be discovered by as many people as possible from the target audience. For non-business websites this might be a very different story as there might be (portions of) websites that shouldn’t be discoverable or even viewable by everyone. This is an important consideration that needs to be incorporated into your website design.
If your goal is to be discoverable by as many people as possible then I’m sure you’ve heard of search engine optimization or SEO. This is a very common part of strategic website design and it’s a very hot topic at the moment. This is a complex task aimed at ensuring that your website ranks higher on search engines (such as Google) so people can find you easier and quicker. After all, what good is a website if nobody sees it? Strategically designed websites incorporate basic to advanced SEO into the overall process to aid search engine ranking and discoverability.
Alternatively, you might not want your website to show up on search engines, or certain pages to not be viewable at all. Or you might want certain pages to be viewed by a limited audience instead of everyone on the internet. From a business point of view, you might have pages that serve a less-than-exciting purpose so you don’t want these to show up on search engine results but you do want them on your website. A good example might be your shipping & returns policy. Or, you might want to have a members-only area where only your paying clients are able to view the information that you provide. Whatever your goals are, they play a very big role in your website design process.
A unique example of a specific audience being allowed to view and access a website is a wedding website. Usually, wedding websites showcase the couple getting married and all the details of their special day. It is completely understandable that it is not desirable for everyone in the world to be able to find where and when the wedding takes place, what are the accommodation arrangements and to RSVP. Ensuring that the wedding website meets these discoverability criteria can be achieved by strategically creating all touchpoints that lead to the wedding website and limiting the website audience by hiding it from search engines and introducing a password for accessing the site.
There’s various measures that can be taken to ensure that your website shows up in a way that aligns with your goals, whether that’s trying to showcase to as many people as possible or limiting it from being discoverable or viewable by the general public. Great website design will incorporate these goals seamlessly.
Put it in action: What is your goal in terms of discoverability? How well are you doing towards achieving those goals? Are all your website pages optimized in line with your goals?
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WEBSITE DESIGN & BRANDING CHECKLIST
In case you’re wondering… What are key elements of a strategic website design & branding? How to ensure your website & brand identity tick all the boxes? Does your current website & branding (still) suit your needs?
I hope that this post was helpful on your website design journey and I'm so excited to see how you apply these actionable steps in practice!
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