Starting a new website project can feel exciting, with a new design, new features and a fresh digital shopfront. However, it’s easy to let that excitement snowball, and can often mean starting your project before you are ready.
Behind every successful site is the collaboration between you as a company and your agency and developer. Your website is more than just a logo and colour palette – it can help you achieve your business goals, attract new customers and be the face of your brand.
So, here are the top 5 things to know in order to ensure your new website launch is as smooth and successful as possible:
1. A clear brief saves everyone time
Time after time people reach out to an agency or developer out of necessity, without truly understanding what they want from their new website. This means it’s all too common for the full project brief to be “We just need a new site that stands out.” While this is a great starting point, in acknowledging that your site potentially isn’t helping you stand out from the crowd, it doesn’t give much direction. This can lead to your developer going around in circles at the design stage or, in some cases, lead to you getting a site that doesn’t truly represent the goals, ambitions and brand of the business.
So what makes a good brief?
The more detail you can provide up front, the more your designers have to work with to make your vision come to life. Some things you should think about before getting quotes are:
- What are your main goals with the new website? – Are you looking to drive sales, get more enquiries via forms or phone calls, something as simple as building your brand recognition or anything else? If you can highlight this early on, your design team can integrate features to enhance the users’ experience and achieve those goals as efficiently as possible.
- Who is your core target audience? – Who are you looking to attract to the website? This will include age groups, gender, location, average income, as well as psychographics such as interests, lifestyle and values. It can also include some behavioural traits such as brand loyalty or purchasing habits.
- Key Requirements – This is your list of things which MUST be included. This may seem obvious but often, half way through a project, essential features will be requested that may need your agency to go back to the drawing board and completely rethink the design. This could lead to delays or projects going well past the original timeline and, in some cases, unexpected costs, so that these requests can be accommodated.
As long as you factor in these three key areas, you will maximise your return on investment and ensure your project gets off to the best start possible.
2. Content is usually the biggest hurdle
Design and functionality are essential to any website, but these will generally be completed faster than the content needed to fill the pages. Often, your agency will have completed the templates and coding, but can’t launch your website as they are waiting on text, images, case studies or brochures.
It is often assumed that your website team can create these things; however, nobody knows your products/services, niches and business better than you. In order to accurately get your business message across, a collaborative effort is needed where you provide key information, text, images and photos of your products. The sooner that information is provided, the quicker your project can be completed.
3. Design is more than looks
It’s easy to think that the only thing that matters in design is making sure it looks great with your brand colours and images. While this should always be considered, there is a whole lot more to design.
A well thought out design will help control where your end users look, guide them down a sales funnel and can be optimised to help you achieve the goals outlined in your brief. You can often guide people around your website in exactly the way you want. Your designer will explain why certain elements have been created in their current format, and will work with you to make changes which don’t compromise on potential conversion rates.
4. Budget transparency avoids surprises
Every project has limits when it comes to cost. Being up front about your budget when approaching an agency helps us to advise you on what is realistic. If there are ‘nice to haves’ in your project scope that are likely to inflate costs, it is often possible for an agency to help phase a project to spread costs and meet budget constraints.
Being open and honest also helps set out a priority order for work based on what will provide the biggest impact for return on investment. This can help build up a future budget to cover any functionality or features that were out of scope at the start of the project – this allows you to still achieve your dream website in a more cost effective way. At MNA Digital we are always honest and upfront with clients – our aim is to create the perfect site for you, and part of that is ensuring there are no hidden surprises, which could derail progress.
5. The best results come from a partnership
To get the most out of any project you need to work collaboratively – combine the expertise of an agency with the unique knowledge you have of your business. We touched on this earlier in the blog, but it is important to understand that the website will never work optimally if either party tries to take full control of the project.
While your agency will likely understand nuances to a design to help lead users through a journey, it wont resonate with your target audience if the content hasn’t been written to fully represent your brand, USPs and personality. This affects your conversion rate negatively, so it is crucial that both parties listen to each other throughout the website building process.
Wrap-up
Embarking on a new website project is a significant undertaking that thrives on clear communication and a collaborative spirit between the client and agency. By investing time up front in crafting a detailed brief, clients can ensure their vision aligns with the agency’s execution, preventing costly delays and misaligned outcomes.
Furthermore, proactive content preparation is paramount, as it often becomes the biggest bottleneck in project timelines. A well-designed website goes beyond aesthetics; it strategically guides users and optimises for conversion, making it essential for clients to trust their agency’s expertise in this area.
Openly discussing budget constraints allows agencies to propose realistic solutions and phased approaches, avoiding unforeseen financial surprises. Ultimately, the most successful projects emerge from a true partnership, where both client and agency contribute their unique insights – the client providing invaluable business knowledge, and the agency offering design and development expertise. This will create a website that truly resonates with its audience and achieves its objectives.
