Nigel Wilkinson
Managing Director of Daneswood. Nigel has been in sales and marketing since the 1980's and run digital marketing agencies since 2000.
So, you are planning a new website, and you’ve decided on your agency. You sit back and await to see the new designs, and it’s very exciting. But hold on, you’ve missed out a vital step. Before you jump into designs, you need to think about the user’s experience through your website.
What information will they need, and what do you want them to do next? The starting point is to work with your agency to create a Site Map. What pages will the website have, and how will those pages interact with each other? The Site Map determines the Navigation and, therefore, the User’s Journey through the website. The jargon for this part of the process is the User eXperience, or UX. It’s also called The Customer Journey.
Please bear in mind you may have more than one user group, e.g. If you are a charity, you want to include pathways for clients, client referrers, volunteers, corporate funders, and employees. A recruitment site will want separate paths for Employers and Job Seekers.
How will your products or services sub-divide? E.g. Kitchens or bathrooms, Home or Garden, Men’s Shoes or Ladies’ Shoes, Motor Boats or Yachts, Domestic or Commercial. What are the pages and/or sections you want on your website?
You might need to use sub-sections if you have a wide range of Products or Services. Take the time to map out how customers will find what they need. Next, get your agency to Wireframe the key pages; for example, on an eCommerce site, this would typically be the Home, Section Header and Product Pages. Block out the layout of the website so everyone knows the format. This ensures that when you pass the structure over to the Designers, they make your planned Customer Journey look wonderful instead of creating a visual masterpiece that visitors can’t use!
For more detail on planning the Customer Journey and creating a website that elevates your business, download our free guide – we don’t ask for your contact details – you can find it here https://daneswood.co.uk/website-design-development/