The 5 Things to Keep in Mind When Designing a Website

Here is a small guide that in Studio Up - Web Agency Milano we use to shape the method for a new website, useful when you’re developing it for you or for a business that pays for that.

• Understand what the business wants.
• Understand what their users need.
• Know the assets you’re about to show.
• Know the business branding.
• Understand how much they want their users to interact with them.

Understand what the business wants

We know what lies in your mind right now: “My client tells me what he wants all the time!” This is the biggest misconception ever: what business always do is trying to get design solutions to problem not analyzed with design thinking.

As soon as we can we run Google Analytics (or equivalent platforms that the client uses) and speak about what are the expected results of having their company on the web.

This is very useful to define a strategic approach and a quick way on how to reach the client expectations with design solutions. It’s your turn to transfer knowledge to the client because after all you’re the one who makes websites for a living.

Understand what their users need

Quite an obvious answer here: Users want to live happily with all their problems sorted. From looking for ending all the wars to paying a parking fine.

This is universally true, and also completely useless if not applied to your real thing to solve here. If you have enough time and budget, let’s do a user research. You can make people test different versions of the same design. Of course, not every client gives you the resources to do this the right way, so if you cannot make it properly you probably want to search bigger websites that solved similar issues, also in different areas or businesses. Go steal their user research!

Know the assets you’re about to show

THIS LIST IS SO BORING and obvious! No it’s not, unfortunately these are the issues that everyone forgets.

Your client is full with enthusiasm, pushing you to do a first draft “filled with pics from unsplash and those latin words, I can change everything when it’s online anyway”.

This is a tear-filled canyon. 90% of the clients are not going to like what they see after you completed a mockup unrelated to their business. Key moment ahead: don’t do anything without knowing the kind of material you’re about to publish, otherwise the website will be a dull container, perfect for holding nothing.

Know the business branding

Branding is not just fonts, logos and colours: it’s a set of rules and how-tos. Kudos if you’re the designer or in the team who designed everything, but else... you’ll have to know them and understand them, otherwise you’ll lose a lot of time. Do this correctly and you will know instantly how to present data and build the pages. Take the right amount of time to get in touch with who made the brand manual!

Understand how much they want their users to interact with them

This is quite different but useful: understand how your clients want their user to play around with the site, what your client is expecting to let them do. Keep in mind that users want to interact, they don’t want to be spectators but actors, they think their problem is different and that they are special, so have you evaluated it correctly?

By Studio Up - https://www.studioup.it