The process of redesigning your website can be a gift from the Gods or several months in hell – depending on how you approach it. For most businesses the need to redesign a website spawns from a lack of performance, such as conversions and sales, or a lack of vision caused by poor usability, irrelevant content and navigational issues.
Whatever your reasons, we understand that creating a new home for your brand online can bring an immense amount of pressure to innovate and re-imagine your position in the digital marketplace.
Unfortunately, most individuals who are given the responsibility to source and manage a website redesign tend to seek inspiration in the wrong places. While “top 10 amazing websites” and similar blog posts provide creative direction, you need to start by turning off the computer and taking a look at your business and the customers which have helped make it what it is today.
The most successful websites are successful because there are real people behind it – and those people are very clear about whom they are, the services or products they provide and the value it brings to their customers.
If your company was a person, what would its personality be like?
- Witty
- Outgoing
- Laid back
- Straight shooter
Once you’ve defined who you are and your personality as a company, it will be incorporated throughout your entire website redesign. From the content to the information architecture, logo and color scheme – “you” should be present in every facet of your website.
Open up Google Analytics and take a look at demographical reports and statistics pertaining to your current web users and trends over the last 12 months. Send an email to some of your most loyal clients find out what it is they value most from you and your company.
The process of answering “who are they?” will provide deep insight into your customer and market, allowing you to build an ideal user persona that will resonate throughout every interaction on your redesigned website.
Though you may think you know who your perfect customer is, the reality is that your users are affected by changes around them and in turn, constantly changing habits and expectations. By knowing who you are, and who your ideal user is, creating a memorable user experience with a website redesign should be as natural as a beer-fueled conversation at your local pub on a Friday night.
Now this isn’t an excuse to start obsessing over what the other guys are doing, but rather answering the question “what makes my website different from the rest?” It’s important to remember that, unlike 80% of your competitors, you goal isn’t to please everyone that meets your ideal user persona.
Embedding your personality into your website, social media strategy and printed goods, is the first step to setting you apart from the rest of your market. You want users to have a consistent experience regardless of the medium in which they interact with your brand and its products.
Emotional response is the name of the game, and it’s the combination between personality, emotion and design that will get people talking – which no internet marketing campaign can out match. Believe it or not, the reason some websites are more successful and memorable than others doesn’t have to do with originality or branding as much as it has to do with how your website makes a user feel.
It may seem a little weird talking about making user experience design more human, but the truth is, no matter if a customer is window shopping at a retail outlet or on your website, how they feel, whether they are aware of it or not, ultimately determines the decisions they make.
How does the Climax Media website make you feel?
Think about it.
Image courtesy of Pete Reed