Webolutions web design company has 25+ years experience delivering custom website design and internet marketing services that achieve amazing results!
We’ve written this web design page to help you and answer common questions about website design. You’ll find helpful links to continue your research. We hope that once you’ve familiarized yourself with the topic, you’ll give Webolutions website design company a call to discuss your new website or website redesign project.
Marketing has evolved significantly over the past couple of decades, and traditional methods no longer drive the leads necessary to grow your business. Today, your website forms the foundation of all your marketing efforts. It is the primary way you can reach a wider audience, build your brand, establish your business as an industry thought leader, and convey the benefits of the products/services you offer.
For this reason, it’s critical that you have a well designed website for your business. An effective website becomes your most powerful lead generation tool, allowing you to attract the qualified leads necessary to grow and thrive over time.
On the other hand, a poorly designed website can significantly diminish the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. These websites tend to underperform on search engines, making it harder for your audience to find you online. If they do find your website, it typically won’t deliver the exceptional user experience necessary to keep your audience engaged long enough to learn about what makes your business special.
To avoid these issues, it’s critical to work with a website design company that can build your website according to industry best practices. This will set all of your marketing efforts up for success, allowing you to reach your target audience and drive the quality leads your business needs.
Web design is the process of planning and building the structure and appearance of your website. The structure of your website refers to the navigation architecture, which creates a hierarchical organization flow that allows visitors to move through your website to find the information they need. The appearance of the website refers to the colors, fonts, images and other visual elements used to represent the information conveyed on your website.
There are several components which must be addressed to ensure your website provides an exceptional user experience for your visitors:
Website design is different from web development. While website design focuses on the front end elements of your website (the part that users interact with), web development focuses on the back end coding that makes your website work. The code created in the web development process makes your website functional for the end user.
It’s common for businesses to get hung up on the aesthetics when designing or redesigning their website. While it’s important for your website to look beautiful, align with your branding and catch the eye of your audience, this is only part of what makes it an effective marketing tool. You must also build a website that is easy to use and provides the exceptional user experience your audience craves.
The following best practices are critical to ensuring your new website delivers the results your business needs:
Your goal is to get your audience to complete a desired action when they visit your website. This may be to schedule a consultation, sign up for your newsletter, join your community, download your eBook, or anything else that may help you turn this person into a lead. Therefore, you want to avoid including any unnecessary design elements which don’t serve a functional purpose. These unnecessary elements can potentially overwhelm your visitors, making it more difficult for them to find the information they’re looking for and to take your desired action.
For this reason, simplicity is critical when designing a website. This applies to all of the visual elements on your web pages, including:
Graphics – Don’t add graphics and images haphazardly. Make sure they serve a purpose, and avoid including so many that your page appears cluttered. This will make it hard for your audience to determine what elements of the page demand their attention.
Colors – When it comes to picking colors, less is more. Your color scheme should align with your branding. If you feel it’s necessary to use additional colors beyond those associated with your brand, be judicious. Too many colors in your design can become distracting to users.
Fonts – Your fonts should be easy to read, and the text color should contrast with your page background so that it stands out. As with colors, less is more when it comes to fonts. As a general rule, use no more than three different fonts and three different text sizes on a page to avoid distracting your audience.
Just as maintaining simplicity in your website design will help people focus on the elements of the page that drive results, an effective visual hierarchy will complement these efforts to increase the likelihood that your audience takes your desired action. Visual hierarchy refers to the way the elements on the page are organized and arranged. When this is done effectively, your website visitors will more easily focus their attention on the most important elements first.
Remember, the goal of your website is to get your audience to complete a desired action that will help convert them into a lead. The best way to achieve this goal is to place your conversion elements prominently on the page, and as high up as possible, to ensure your audience sees these items and understands the desired action you want them to take. By adjusting the size, color and position of these conversion elements, you can more effectively structure your web pages in a way that will draw your audience to these items when they first land on the page.
Most people who are visiting your website for the first time are still in the information gathering process and often aren’t ready to purchase your product or service. In order to aid them in their research and help them learn more about your company, you’ll need an intuitive website navigation architecture.
When you design your navigation architecture effectively, it will be easy for your visitors to move throughout your website and find what they’re looking for. You want to create a flow that is logical and easy to figure out.
The following navigation architecture best practices should be followed when designing your new website:
Keep your top navigation menu simple (between 3 and 6 top menu items)
Include a supplemental navigation menu in your website footer
Add a search bar at the top of your website so users can search for the information they need
Don’t include too many pages in your top navigation dropdown menus (stick to only the first tier pages for each menu item)
Include links within the content on each page to help users navigate to relevant content, and make it obvious where these links will take the reader
Keep your top navigation menu consistent from page to page
With 48% of global page views coming from mobile devices, it’s critical that your website provides an exceptional mobile experience. In fact, 93% of individuals state that they leave a website when it doesn’t load properly on their mobile device.
The best way to provide an exceptional user experience on a mobile device is to build your website with a responsive design. Responsive design ensures the elements on each page will be resized and repositioned to align with the dimensions of the screen being used to view the website. When you use responsive design, your website will provide a great experience on any device being used, reducing the likelihood that you’ll lose visitors instantly when they land on your website.
Effective website design ensures that everyone is able to use the website. When you optimize the accessibility of your website, individuals with disabilities and other limitations that impact their browsing ability will still be able to have a good experience.
Adhering to accessibility best practices will not only ensure a great experience for all users, but it will help improve your SEO results, making your website easier to find.
A web design company does more than simply build your website. Their goal is to provide you with the cornerstone of your marketing efforts and help you improve your lead generation. To ensure your website effectively conveys your brand story, provides the best experience for your target audience and achieves your desired goals, your website design agency will collaborate with you throughout every stage of the process.
You’ll work with a team of specialists, including web designers, web developers, content creators and SEO specialists. The collaborative aspect of the process ensures your website design team will be aligned with your business regarding your specific goals for your website.
Website design is a complex process that involves a variety of important phases to ensure the finished product achieves your goals. The following six steps are critical to the success of the project:
Identify your goals – Your web design company can’t deliver an effective website for the needs of your business without first understanding your goals. This is accomplished by holding a series of discovery meetings with your team intended to establish your most important business objectives. These goals will dictate the strategy and recommendations associated with your project.
Build a framework – Your website design agency will build a framework for your new website that will help you achieve your goals. The framework consists of the navigation outline as well as any specific functionalities that must be implemented with your website. After this framework is complete, a wireframe will be developed providing an overview of the entire website, and a mockup of your page design will help you get a sense for how the website will look and feel.
Designing and developing – Once you’ve approved the wireframe and mockups, it’s time to create the actual website that will bring your story to life. The design process includes implementing all colors and fonts used, as well as creating the specific layout of each page. A series of calls to action will also be designed that will help optimize your website for conversions. At the same time, a team of web developers will complete the back-end coding required to implement your website’s functionality.
Testing – Comprehensive testing is conducted to ensure the website is performing properly. Any issues identified during testing will be fixed before the website goes live.
Launch – Once testing is complete and any potential issues are resolved, it’s time to launch your website. After launch, the website can be viewed by any individuals who may be searching for the products/services you provide.
Ongoing monitoring and maintenance – In order to ensure your website continues to perform at a high level and achieve your goals, your website design company will continuously monitor its performance over time and recommend any updates necessary to drive the results you desire.
There many components involved in building a new website, and each one is equally important to achieving your goals. At Webolutions, we are a full service web design company and provide all of the aspects necessary to deliver the high performing website your business needs. This includes:
Website design – We offer custom website design to ensure your website has a unique look and feel that will help you stand out from your competitors. Your branding will play an important role in the design process, ensuring that your story is consistently conveyed throughout the website.
Web development – Custom programming will allow your website to address the specific integrations and functionality that will provide an exceptional user experience for your audience and address the specific marketing goals of your business.
Content – Content is one of the most important components of your website. Your content will serve to educate your audience, position your business as a thought leader, establish trust with your audience, improve your search engine rankings and drive leads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engine optimization is critical to ensuring your audience can find your website. Our SEO specialists will utilize industry best practices that improve your search engine rankings for your priority keywords.
eCommerce integrations – If you want to sell your products directly to your customers from your website, eCommerce functionality can be implemented, providing a seamless user experience.
Logo design – Our team can design a new logo as well as any other imagery needed to convey your brand story on your new website.
Website hosting – We offer website hosting services that provide the site security and performance you need.
Performance intelligence – Data is critical to ensuring your new website is achieving your goals. Our robust performance intelligence data will evaluate your website’s performance in real time, allowing us to make recommendations that will improve your results.
Website maintenance – Our team will assist with any updates that are necessary over time to continue driving the results you need.
Template websites are built using a pre-existing layout called a template. This reduces the time and cost required to design the website, but these benefits must be weighed against the negative impact on your finished product. Because templates dictate how your website is built, they create considerable limitations regarding the level of customization you can achieve with the look, feel and advanced functionality of your website. This often results in a generic website that won’t be able to effectively meet the needs of your business or your target audience.
Custom websites, on the other hand, give you complete control over every aspect of the web development process. Your new website will be built entirely from scratch according to the specific needs of your business. This allows you to create a truly unique look and feel that aligns with your branding. You’ll also be able to implement the advanced functionality necessary to create an exceptional user experience. For these reasons, custom websites are a much more effective lead generation tool.
The cost of a new website from a web design agency varies significantly based on a variety of factors, including:
In general, you should expect to pay upwards of a few thousand dollars for a template website. Custom web design projects usually start at about $10,000 for more basic sites, but can become significantly more expensive for very large websites involving complex advanced functionality requirements.
You can request a quote from our website design specialists to get a clearer picture of how much it will cost to build a website that addresses the specific needs of your business. Our team can offer flexible plans in order to work within your budget.
It’s important to work with an experienced web design company that possesses the expertise necessary to create a website that will deliver the superior marketing performance your business needs. During your consultation, make sure to ask the following questions to get a better feel for whether the website design company’s approach will address your goals:
What will the website planning process look like? Will we discuss my goals at the onset to ensure the new website aligns with the needs of my business?
What web design services are included in my project?
Have you built websites with similar functionality requirements as mine?
Can you help me design a logo and any other brand assets I need as part of my website project?
Can I review examples of your previous website designs to better understand the quality I can expect?
What kind of CMS platform do build your websites on? Will you provide training to my team so they can easily make updates to the website once it goes live?
You should also check the web design agency’s online reviews to see whether their clients have been happy with their results.
The length of time it will take to build your new website depends on a variety of factors. The most important factor is your choice of a template website or a custom website. Template websites can be completed fairly quickly, typically within a month or two. Custom websites generally take a little longer – roughly three to four months – due to the additional work required to build the site from scratch. However, this longer timeline is well worth it for the superior results you can achieve with a custom website.
Keep in mind that these timeframes are rough estimates that may vary based on your team’s engagement throughout the web design process. Your input, feedback and approval will be needed at various stages. If your team is able to provide the feedback, assets and other items needed by your website design agency in a timely manner, your project will be able to move along as scheduled. However, this timeline may be extended if your team doesn’t remain engaged and responsive.
Webolutions has been Denver’s top web design company since 1994. We have been ranked among Denver’s Largest Web Designers/Developers by the Denver Business Journal every year since 2002. Our team of web design specialists can build you a high performing website that is tailored to your specific business goals and delivers the results that will set your business up for ongoing success.
Creating a high performing website that elevates your other marketing efforts and grows your business takes careful planning and expert execution. It’s crucial to work with a web design company that can deliver the results you need. At Webolutions, we have you covered.
Webolutions has been an industry leading web design agency since our inception in 1994. Our unique Websites Right Methodology™ has been developed over nearly three decades, incorporating the experience, knowledge and lessons learned from building thousands of websites. This fully integrated, strategic approach to website development creates a far better client experience, increased website marketing performance and vastly superior business results.
With access to robust custom web design services and our exclusive Websites Right Methodology™, you’ll be set up for success at every stage of the process. Our unique methodology delivers the results you need by:
Our comprehensive web design services will allow you to grow your business faster, smarter and easier. You’ll be able to convey your brand messaging in a way that allows you to stand out from your competitors, distinguishing your company as a trusted industry leader. This will help you attract new clients and retain existing clients for longer.
The more you know about the web design process, the more likely you are to get this important aspect of your marketing strategy right. The following resources will help you round out your web design research:
5 Ways Effective Web Design Can Help Your Business Grow
Custom Web Design vs. Template Websites: What’s the Difference?
5 Essential Elements of Quality Web Design
5 Critical Benefits of Custom Website Design
Contact us today to schedule a consultation. Webolutions provides web design services to clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.
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