Building a New Website in 2023? Here are 3 Areas of Focus!

Customers Still Look at Your Website

3 out 4 customers will decide to do business with you based on your online presence according to PR Newswire. With that in mind, a website is crucial to your success. To create a better experience and high value website, it’s so important to stay organized and maximize your efficiency during the build process. Having meaningful conversations, providing timely yet accurate quotes, and kicking off the design correctly are the key areas I am going hone in on. Whether you are a web design client or web designer, these 3 areas of focus will help you as you begin building a new website in 2023.

#1 – Can I Talk to A Real Web Designer?

Can’t I talk to a real human? One of the biggest complaints I hear about the big design agencies is the lack of personalized communication. I find it more meaningful to talk with the business owner – in fact I am more likely to do business with them due to that closer connection. In this day and age in 2023, I do realize phone or in-person conversations are harder to make happen. Let’s put the conversation into the context of an intake process or exploration phase.  I would argue they are more crucial for 2 reasons. 1) If you are a prospective client, you want to trust the company you hire. A live conversation is going to help validate that trust OR make a decision to go elsewhere. 2) If you are a web design agency, this will allow you to prove that you are the agency for them – much easier and impactful than writing a paragraph email or text message. As a bonus, you can level-set expectations and/or guide the prospective client through your process to get their website live.

# 2- What Is Your Pricing To Build A Website?

What is your pricing? This in fact the most common question I receive from prospective clients. If I take my car to a repair shop for a loud noise it’s making and ask how much it will cost, they will likely respond, “it depends”. Getting a website design quote or SEO quote requires key details to right-size your solution and price. We have developed an all-encompassing website quote survey and SEO quote survey to formulate an accurate quote the first time. Even better, these questions can be asked during the conversation (previous area) to quickly get pricing to the prospective client. If you are the client, this is great because you learn about the business and pricing (probably what you wanted, anyway) all in one conversation. The point is, asking the right questions to formulate an accurate quote and doing so in a timely manner are going to set you up for success in 2023.

#3 – What Are Your Requirements To Build This Website?

Great – now start building!…Wait, not so fast! This is where my project management background comes into play. Let’s take a website redesign as an example. As a web designer you should have a way to ask the important upfront questions. The initial questions that are most important are not about the colors or font but about the business itself. Instead ask – Who is your target online audience? What do you hope to accomplish with your website? As I mentioned above several times, for local clients, a face-to-face meetup is preferred to avoid churn and create a more conducive environment! I recently sat down with a local client and got extreme clarity on requirements/design preferences and even created a rough wireframe – all within an hour. The bonus here was that I built a strong relationship with them all while getting the critical information I needed to get started on a mockup!

Some Key Takeaways As You Embark On Your Web Site Project

New or existing, client or web designer, a quality website deserves proper attention and execution from all parties. An actual human conservation, efficient quoting and effective design process are the 3 initial ways to launch the web design project with success and create relationships that last. There is a lot that happens during a website build and these were just 3 areas that are crucial to get right. Are there more areas of focus? Are there more tips/tricks and best practices to follow? Yes to both! All of that for a later blog! To see our entire web design process from start to finish, check out our web design process. If you’re interested in building the website of your dreams to maximize your business results, reach out to Radford Results Web Design below.