Optimised web development guide

Web Development Guide

Contents 1. Importance of Your Website 2. A Solid Platform: 3. Customer Profiling 4. Website Design 5. Social Media Technologies 6. Mobile Website Development 7. Analytics 8. Our Development Process 9. FAQs

Importance of Your Website The first stage of your website build is to decide its ultimate goal. There are many reasons why our customers consider ordering a new website: “We need a new corporate look and feel” “The sales team wants it done” “It’s been 12 months since the last design” “The boss wants it done” These can all be catalysts to get a new web project started, but it is not the real reason you need a new website.

There are only a few reasons you should really need a new website: •

Support a sale

•

Make a sale

•

Clearly identify customers

•

Segment customers

•

Support and minimise administration

A Solid Platform Inevitably any type of marketing will lead back to your company website. A good website is key to converting leads generated by your advertising and marketing efforts.

A recent survey showed that 76% of consumers rated an easily navigational website to be of key importance to them.

Good web design makes sure that each element has a purpose, the greater good of which is the easy access to the content inside.

The essence of good web design is a website that visually leads you into what you came looking for.

What is the most important factor of the design of a website?

5%

10%

Other

Beautiful appearance

9%

A cutting edge interactive experience

76%

The website makes it easy for me to find what I want

Customer Profiling Customer profiling is used to categorise and understand different customer types and is used to create a website that is focused.

It is hard to sell to every type of customer and a website that tries to will often fail. Customer profiling allows us to make fundamental design and build decisions providing complete focus.

Website Design Information Architecture

Language and Tone

Information Architecture is the combination of organisation, labelling, search and navigation systems within websites.

The language and tone is very important in a website, it can set you apart from your competitors and it can persuade more prospects to pick up the phone to make an enquiry.

Simplified it means website users can find the information they require quickly and with the fewest amount of clicks from the mouse button.

We plan out the structure of your information in a wireframe format, which is then passed on to the design team who will create the look and feel of the site. The site navigation will be clear and consistent on every page. To increase the usability the design will allow multiple routes to a user’s goal.

Remarkable Content Attract and convert – Great unique design is important when developing a brand, however, most web users care about the content more than design.

Our web designs will be excellent, but careful attention has to be made to the content. We will help you develop content that is engaging, answers web users’ questions quickly, efficiently and is brand persuasive.

We will work with you to deliver punchy readable copy that answers 80% of client questions in 20% of space and design the site so the remaining 20% is answered in more detailed areas of the website.

In a nutshell your copy should be heavy on answers, but light, easy and enjoyable to read.

Social Media Technologies The Internet is changing. Internet users now expect to find information in multiple places and in various formats. The information Internet users seek is expected to be open, honest and transparent. We also want to be able to rank, rate and comment on the information that is on the Internet and refer / forward information on to friends and colleagues quickly and easily.

There are usually lots of questions surrounding social media, we are more than HAPPY to answer any questions you may have!

We will use social media technologies and integrate them within your website to be able to achieve the above goals.

Mobile Website Development Current figures show that smart phones and tablet computers contribute to 30% of a website’s traffic. Further research shows us that websites accessed by a mobile device that have not been developed for mobile devices in mind have low conversion rates and high bounce rates as visitors leave the website quickly due to a poor mobile browsing experience.

Our websites are built to a high and modern browser standard we use HTML5, AJAX, JavaScript technologies to a W3C standard.

This means that our websites will work as standard on smart phones and mobile tablet computers, however, we can, if required, develop smart phone / tablet (mobile or lite websites) built in mind specifically for smaller devices.

Responsive Web Design Responsive web design is an alternative approach to web design in which a website is developed to provide an optimal viewing experience across multiple sized screen devices without having to rely on developing both a standard website and a separate mobile version. The responsive website is designed and developed to automatically resize across devices making easy viewing and navigation, reducing pinch and zoom, panning, and scrolling.

Analytics If you don’t measure you can’t manage and make informed decisions. As standard we install enterprise grade server statastics and Google Analytics. Features are wide and powerful. They include: •

Analysis tools

•

Content analytics

•

Social analytics

•

Mobile analytics

•

Conversion analytics

•

Advertising analytic

Using these tools you can understand how your website is performing and drill down on important customer usage information. This allows you to make informed decisions on how to improve your marketing activities.

Development Process Client Brief

Agree goal of website

Customer Profiling

Content strategy & content development

Analyse, review & improve

Information architecture & wide frame design

Build test & launch

Graphic Design

FAQs Q) How much does a website cost?

A) Expect to pay no less than £1,000 for a startup business or brochure website. Our average website costs between £3,000-£5,000 for a larger non-ecommerce website. You can pay £7,000-£15,000 for an e-commerce website. In all instances you will need to consider how you are going to market your new website and in some instances allocate an additional budget.

Q) I don’t really need to go too in-depth with the website process. I know my customers and just want a nice looking website. Can you just make me a nice looking simple website?

A) Yes no problem we will take a brief from you and provide some advice to get the most out of your ideas, but we will keep the process simple.

Q) Who is going to provide all the content like the text and pictures?

A) We always like to work with out clients as a partnership once we understand your business we can work together to provide the content.

Q) Who is going to put in all the content?

A) We will put all your initial content in as part of the build. After that you have full access to our content management admin system where you can keep it updated yourself.

Q) My new website is built and is live for all to see. Is that it then?

A) No. In most cases you will want to monitor and analyse your websites performance. You will want to make continuing improvements to get the most out of your online marketing. Your business is organic, the market place, economy and competition frequently changes and it should be reflected on your website. Make sure you allow a budget for updates and changes to your website that fall outside of the original specification.

Q) In the last answer you said I may need to pay for changes on my website. Don’t I have a content management system that can deal with all changes?

A) Yes, you have a content management system which will allow you to add content based upon the original spec. In our experience, however, unforeseen circumstances tend to happen. For instance, your business changes unexpectedly or you have a great new idea, product or service that was not within the original build. Whilst our management system is powerful and can deal with most things, sometimes the right thing to do is for us to have our professional designers create the exact look and feel of the new section or element to the website.

Optimised Salters House, Salters Court, 156 High Street, Hull, HU1 1NQ

0333 772 9892

info@optimised.today