Good web design gives your business credibility. It shows that you value your visitors – you won’t earn their trust unless they feel that your site is a serious undertaking with a long-term future. A sophisticated, well designed site may well be your main (if not only) chance to make a good impression.

Our good web design methodology

At Wightfield Interactive, we believe in, and are passionate about our craft. Good web design is at the heart of our ethic. But – unlike some other agencies, we firmly believe there’s more to good web design than just pretty images on a web page – keep reading, and you’ll see why we’re different…

With each new challenge and assignment, we start with an analysis of need. What should we build, and why? Finding the correct answer to this question can be the hardest part of the design process and is best achieved by a meeting with the client’s marketing and IT staff, and ourselves. We’d expect this initial meeting to cover the following:

Client business goals

Establishing goals means asking questions. How do you make money? Even in the case of not-for-profit organisations, the answer to this question will help determine business objectives and specific functionality requirements.

Who are your most formidable competitors?

Answering this entails thorough research of the online marketplace and competitors’ offerings. Reviewing what they are (as well as what they’re not) doing can help define your own goals. Keeping up with the Joneses can be a pitfall – just because a competitor has chosen a particular route doesn’t mean it’ll suit your business.

How will success be measured?

It’s important to decide how the site’s success will be assessed. Establishing realistic targets and the methodology for monitoring them will help justify the investment and be an invaluable source of information for future developments.

Brand integrity

Ahead of the design stage, rationalisation of your brand values is an essential first step to ensure that site design is consistent with these values, and enhances them. Brand values include:

• Brand promise – the primary benefit provided to customers that will separate what you offer from the competition
• brand attributes – the benefits that your customer receives from your products or services
• brand personality – how the brand is communicated to customers. For example, logo, identity, colours and design style.

The user’s goals

Good web design will incorporate a thorough understanding of user goals – this is crucial to ensuring that the site achieves its objectives. If you’re unsure of the answers to the following questions, performing a customer survey or consulting a focus group could be invaluable.

• What are your clients’ expectations when visiting your web site?
• What degree of technical skill do they have?
• How do you currently interact with your clients and how can the web site be used to enhance this interaction?

Conclusion

To conclude, we firmly believe and advise that good web design involves far more than just the layout of aesthetically pleasing images and text on a page. A full understanding of the market, the competitors, the customer, the product or service offered, along with the business goals and objectives and the design vision and corporate identity is wholly necessary in order to determine a clear and complete brief at the start of the project development.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us for further good web design advice or more information on any of our services, or a free appraisal of your existing site – we’ll be delighted to help in any way we can.