When it comes to website design, style often trumps functionality.
That’s what often happens anyway.
Functionality can be boring. Often you’ve waited for your new website to be launched. You want it to look cool and fit with your hip style. You want it to have all the awesome new features that are available on websites today.
Your competitors do all kinds of cool things and you want to incorporate them all and more.
This approach can get you into trouble. Your website can get bloated, but even more than that it can get confusing.
You can incorporate some cool things into your website. You can use video and sliders and things like that, but you don’t want to go overboard and you want your website to be functional and what I mean by that is that each visitor knows what you do and they know what to do next.
If you can weave in your style while accomplishing the website’s goals then you’re in business.
Here are some tips when it comes to creating a creative, but functional website.
Tip #1. Map Out The Sales Process
The first step for a good website is to map our your sales process. Your website is basically a salesperson except it’s online and it’s always working for you. And it will do anything you tell it to do.
You likely interact with potential customers and sell your services in person or over the phone. Take those conversations and map out the process. The same conversation will take place online between a visitor and your website. The website needs to answer the right questions at the right time without being too pushy, but being pushy enough to get the visitor to make a purchase.
The understanding of your sales process makes creating your website so much easier. It makes it easier for you to write content and easier for your designer to design the website. And it will make your site more effective. And if you’re starting with this you’ll keep it as the main focus instead of leading with cool stylish touches.
Tip #2. Maintain Page Speed
Next, work with your designer and developer to make sure that you’re optimizing the design and website for page speed. It’s become so critical for your website to be fast in all phases. Google has done a number of studies on page speed. They’ve found that people love fast-loading websites, apps or whatever the media is. Nobody likes waiting for something to load.
So at this point work to make the website fast in all phases. Run tests to look for slow points and make changes as necessary. You might have to take some elements away, but I like looking at page speed before adding stylish touches. You can add those later all while keeping an eye on the page speed.
Tip #3. Add Style Touches
Now you can get into the stylish touches of your website. Your designer will add these no matter what so hopefully you aren’t discouraged at this point. Because the style of your website is important. You want the style to match yourself and your company. You want visitors to get a certain vibe and feel when they first arrive on your website.
But it’s important to have the backbone of your website built around functionality. This helps to avoid confusion with the visitor and by avoiding that you’ll be happier with the site because you’ll get more sales.
If you start with style on a website it can lead to frustration later on and that’s no fun for anyone involved. So start with the sales process first and build from there.
Work with your designer to share some of the style features you like. It can be challenging to tell them so look for examples of things you like. Those things can be websites, but get creative. Show them an interior design you like or a color you like or anything that represents your style. That will all help the designer to create a website that you like and that fits your style.
Tip #4. Run Some User Testing
Once this is all done then you can get into some user testing. Even with a good understanding of your sales process it can be easy to run into some issues with confusion. You have a deep understanding of what your business does, but a potential customer is starting from square one. You have to make explanations as simple as possible and make sure you’re really getting to the core of what you can help your customers with.
Do some user testing with your website with your target customers. Get their feedback, but also watch where they get hung up. This will lead to insight on where issues are and you can fix those before you really start launching and promoting the site.
Tip #5. Schedule Regular Audits
Finally, once your site is done it’s not really done. It’s good to plan on doing some regular audits. I like to suggest doing them every six months. You can maybe get by with doing them every year, but plan on six months or even every quarter.
Go through the sales process again. See if anything with your business has changed. Then make changes accordingly to your website.
Also update photos and images if necessary. Tweak descriptions and explanations and things like that.
Make your site better.
Conclusion
Creativity, style and personality are important in web design. You want your site to represent you and your business, but not at the expense of function. Start with a good backbone when you build your website. Focus on the sales process and build from there. You can add style touches as you go, but make sure your site accomplishes the goals you have for it first.
Do that and you’ll be in good shape and you’ll ultimately be happier with the result. A good-looking website is not always a good website. But it can be if you start with function first and add style second.
