What does a future-proof website look like?
Whilst it is essential to focus on elegance of design and ease of use, the most important part of creating a future-proof successful website is to ensure a customer focused approach.
The end goal of a customer focused website is to create a platform where a company can connect with its audience on an emotional level, in essence replacing the transactional nature of a business with a more empathetic feel. This means seeing the website as a way to not just market to the customer, but to interact with the customer in a way that makes them feel you can solve their problem.
By knowing what the customer is seeking and focusing on communicating and providing that solution in a seamless and intuitive way creates strong quality interactions.
To achieve this goal, we must look at the web design process and ensure it involves a combination of both engineering and marketing as well as the all-important combined elements of graphic, industrial and interface design to bridge the emotional gap between a business and its customers.
Throughout the web design process, it is important to keep in mind the essential qualities of a user-friendly website by ensuring the website is highly useful, easy to operate, and most importantly, intuitive to navigate.
Why is knowing our customers so important?
To achieve success, we need to know our audience. This is through customer insight which is gaining an understanding of the customer and what they are looking for; such research is an essential part of gaining an insight into the customer’s mindset and thought processes.
Knowing our customers inside out is key to success. Before even considering the design or any marketing, we need to understand what makes your customers tick, what their pain points are, and knowing how your product makes their lives easier and solves the problem they’re searching for.
The data that we gather from the research stage assists in shaping the design of a website that is oriented towards the customer’s motivations, needs, goals and expectations. Doing this allows us to better keep the customer’s mindset and personal qualities at the forefront of the design. If your website showcases that it has the customer in mind, your product is destined for success.
Bring customer insight and design together
Following our research, it is essential for us to reflect on the ‘customer journey’ — the series of steps the user will go through when entering and interacting with the website. One effective method of mapping out the customer journey is through a process called ‘wireframing’.
Wireframing is the act of physically developing an illustration that demonstrates how a website will look. Techniques such as wireframing ensure customer self-sufficiency and improve the effectiveness of page navigation, enhancing the overall customer experience.
Perfecting the design process allows us to build a tangible prototype to validate the design decisions and allows for the testing of the website. To take customers on a journey from first accessing your website, to identifying and meeting specific goals, the design and functionality should be built to foster this process smoothly.
A successful future-proof website is creating a comprehensive strategy built on customer insight before the web design process even begins, rather than trying to make it fit into the finished design as an afterthought.
Digital Remedy specialises in customer insight and combines all aspects of web design, development and digital marketing to create a holistic approach to customer experience and brand building.
