PROCESS OF BUILDING A WEBSITE

Most Important Aspects of a Website

1) Aesthetics + Function

The Brandsmen believe these are the two most important elements to modern website design. The digital world is a highly visual one and the importance of good design is more cruical now than ever before. A website that embodies a brand image while resonating with the target audience is a hugely important objective while creating a website, but there’s more to it than that. All too often websites over focus on the creative side which can often leave the user experience and actual function out to dry. Modern websites must be looked at through both a artisitic and business lense to ensure they represent the brand and are setup to convert business.

2) Reasonable Pricing

The cost of websites these days ranges so astronomically it’s not uncommon to receive quotes that are tens of thousands of dollars apart for the exact same website for two different firms. The Brandsmen aren’t the type of agency to simply ask for your website budget and tell you that’s how much it costs. We carefully analyze each project and provide reasonable website quotes with an explanation of the cost and hours involved.

3) Purpose Driven Design

We don’t believe in building fluff into a website. Our objective is for every page on the website, no matter how complex or simple to serve some sort of function. If it doesn’t then it should be there at all! Whether that’s an SEO keyword target to serve as a landing page in search engines or an explanation for a potential customer, our aim is to trim the fat out of websites so that visitors can quickly and easily get the information they need.

Process of Building a Website for a Client

1) Research

Our website design strategy begins with a careful analysis of four things:

• Examples of the style and art direction that our client likes
• Analysis of lead competitors in the industry who are doing things right
• Research of target market to gain insight into design trends they resonate with
• Observations of current brand and product offerings

2) Style Guide

Once we’ve hashed out an idea of both what we think our client will like and what we believe will connect well with our target audience we craft a style guide which outlines the the design style we intend to use to craft the website. This includes elements such as color codes, font types, and featured sections

3) Mockup Creation

After our style guide has been delivered to the client and tweaked for their approval we move into the mockup stage. From here we create a mockup of the homepage in Photoshop and deliver to the client for edits.

4) Homepage Development

When our homepage mockup has been approved by the client we build it out onto a staging URL so the client can get a feel for what the website will look like in a live environment. From here we make any other changes required.

5) Sidepage Development

After our homepage has been approved we move onto the meat of the website where we develop the layout/theme of the sidepages and begin adding all the content into these pages.

6) Website Review & Pre-Launch Evaluation

Once all the content has been added to the website we invite the client to review everything one last time. Once we’re happy with the way everything has been set up, we make sure we’ve got all our ducks in a row for a clean launch. We want to understand how your emails are setup so there’s no problems there, where the domain lives, and where this is going to be hosted. We also set up redirects from all your old pages to make sure there’s no SEO juice lost in the transfer of the new website and no broken pages. We always prefer our clients host websites with us, but this it not a requirement.

7) Website Launch

After a thorough pre-launch eval and website walk-through we will launch the website and immediately test everything once more to make sure everything is functioning properly.

Post Launch Website Marketing Services

To be honest we believe that the creation of a new website is just the first step of a relationship with a new client. No matter how spot on the aesthetics and function of a website, without a strategy to obtain traffic and get people to check it out, a website serves very little function. Our objective during the website design process is to make our clients so happy with our team they choose to continue the relationship with us in the form of digital marketing services such as:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Google Ads Management
• Lead Generation
• Social Media Management

To learn more about The Brandsmen Website Process or to get a quote for your project, contact a Brandsmen today.