Thinking of Redeveloping your Website: How to build your website

Now, unless you’re a computer wiz, it is time for the web development experts to get to work. There are tools to make the running of your website easier, which we will soon discuss, but the building of it should be left to those trained to do so. Just like building a house, if the project isn’t done professionally, there are going to be huge flaws.

The aim of this post is to inform you of the most important steps in the reconstruction process, so that you are able to make informed decisions on YOUR project and on suppliers.

Structure

Sitemap

Once you build a house you need to fill it with stuff and it’s the same with your website. But first you need to make sure there’s a place for it all to go and that you have the pages to fulfil your purpose.

You start by making a sitemap of all pages and how they link together. This initial structure plan is not only necessary for building a website that is user friendly and easy to navigate for your audience but also for search engine success. Search engines, like Google, use sitemaps to index websites so that they appear in their search results and are therefore a necessity for webmasters, from an SEO perspective.

Google themselves state that sitemap files are particularly helpful to new sites with few external sites linking to them.

Wireframes

This step entails creating a blueprint-like plan for your webpages using basic design features. No matter how simple or outlandish you want the design to be, it all starts in black and white.

In western culture, we tend to read from left to write and from top to bottom and this is the way that our eyes focus on webpages as well. It’s called the ‘visual hierarchy’. So, generally speaking, logos are found in the top left of the site, with navigation bars often horizontal and towards the top of the page also. This is so that the logo is the first thing visitors register on the page, meaning your brand image makes an immediate impression, and so that navigation is easy.

Of course, purpose and audience and goals are central to this process. Webpages must be structured in a way that makes important elements stand out. For example, e-commerce sites will make large banners advertising sales and new products prevalent, often spanning the with of the page; and lead generation sites should include contact details towards the top of the page, if not in the header, and contact forms on most pages.

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Appearance

We live in an oh-so superficial world, so it comes as no surprise that aesthetics are a huge part of a brand’s online presence. We mentioned earlier how a website’s primary function can be to brand but ALL websites must do it, even if it isn’t the chief objective.

The visual elements of a website should be consistent with the business’ overall brand image, whether that is an existing style or a new one arranged alongside the site’s reconstruction. Fonts, colour schemes, the logo and other design components should all be considered by a designer, making sure they align with those on display in other company publishings.

Consistency is about making your brand recognisable but it also plays a huge part in having a professional presentation.

With little are aesthetics more closely associated than trends. Music charts, clothes rails and social media are all about current trends and they are all constantly changing, as is the world of web design. One of the main reasons that so many companies are choosing to redevelop their website now is because the online world has begun to leave many sites behind, with outdated designs. Coming across as outdated is damaging to the credibility of your business and outdated websites have other big problems; we’ll look at that next time!!