A New Year – A New Website Design (Must-Have Checklist)

A new year brings with it new resolutions, new business plans, and new strategies.  With the rapid pace that technology advances and the growing amounts of data available for analyses, a company’s website and digital assets need to be reviewed on an annual basis to ensure that it furthers a company’s key strategic goals.

To kick off in 2017, we have put together a checklist to help website teams evaluate their website and its performance.

1. Review Last Year’s Data – With all of today’s analytic software available for your website and digital platforms, there is no longer any excuse for not digging into the data. While some marketers are more comfortable with intangibles and abstract concepts, remember that the language of business numbers and having metrics helps marketers make their case to the c-suite.
   When reviewing data, do the numbers validate your campaigns or strategies or do the analytics point you in another direction and perhaps even show a better way forward?
2. Start With the End In Mind – An often-used adage but always applicable to planning. If you don’t know where you are going, you may have an extended and disoriented journey and never get anywhere.  With your data in hand, think about your end goals and what the numbers reveal about how and if you are on the right track.
3. Review Your Website’s Design –Now that we have the data from the previous year and we have thought about when the end results that we want, its time to pull out the web design checklist and dig into the nuts and bolts of the site and make sure that they are aligned with the new mission.

Web Design Check List

• Does the site look contemporary and dated?
• Does the look and feel of the site match your brand, messaging and customer expectations?
• Is the site using best practices in UX & UI design for its visitors?
• Is the site simple and intuitive to navigate?
• Can visitors to the site find the information they need with a minimal number of clicks?
• Do you have a compelling calls to action that are generating results?
• Is your website mobile friendly – does it render and perform well on mobile devices?
• Is all of your content properly optimized for search engines? Pictures, graphics, video, and copy.
• Is your content original and current?
• Do the visuals (graphics, photos, and video) further explain and reinforce the copy and support the website’s mission?
• Are all links active and live?
• Is the site optimized for fast downloading?
• Are all your social media (SM) icons active and properly linked to your SM platforms?
• Is all contact information up to date – emails, addresses, phone numbers, faxes, etc.
• Have you completed a security audit of your cybersecurity hardware and software?

In closing, it is important to note that highly productive websites are post art and part science.  A beautifully designed and visually appealing site without technology or analytics behind cannot drive business and further your sales and marketing goals.  Likewise, a site that is only built with the latest technology available but ignores how visitors interact with the site and the experience and interface provided to them will fall short too.

At IMPROZ we approach each web design with a fresh set of eyes, realizing that to give our clients a website that gets results they need equal parts creativity and technology.