Every business with an online marketing strategy hopes (and almost always believes) that it has an impactful website. But what entails such a site? In short, it has to attract visitors, convert them into users and entice them to visit the site frequently.
To achieve this, web design, content and visuals must be informative and interesting. Unfortunately, in many instances, website owners don’t realise that their websites can be much more effective if they have been created as user-centric web solutions.
Luckily most online marketers and design experts realise nowadays that if their websites don’t deliver results as originally expected, one reason might be that their sites don’t resonate with the right audiences. To rectify this problem web developers frequently make changes to existing websites to make them more “customer-friendly” and aimed at the needs of targeted audiences. These alterations usually have short-term positive influences but it can be quite costly to regularly add new aspects to online marketing tools to keep visitors and regular users interested.
A much better and more cost-effective user-centric web solution is to ensure that impactful websites are created right from the beginning. In other words, getting input from the foreseen target groups and then designing websites according to what clients need.
In this article, the why and how of building impactful user-centric websites from the development phase will briefly be discussed.
Point of departure
With user-centric web solutions users are always the focal point. Every design aspect is done with end-users in mind. Thus, designers should understand target markets’ expectations and their needs and then align their web design ideas from the beginning with what will resonate easily with end-users. The bottom line is that development processes must from the beginning take end users’ perspectives as the point of departure.
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Why and how to get user information in the development stage
Sometimes, the question arises of why and how to gather information beforehand to include in the development phase right from the beginning. Various methods can be used, including:
- Interviews with current and potential clients regarding what they want to experience when the business goes online with a new website. This will help to determine what type of web page design should be developed.
- Online questionnaires can randomly be sent to people not currently interested in the product or service to determine what should be part of the web page design that could “entice” them to visit it.
- “Test pages” during the development process. Prepare test designs and request current clients to open these pages and after actually using them report back on aspects such as speed, accessibility and usefulness.
Pros of user-centric web solutions created during development phase
User-centric web solutions benefit users and businesses. If the web page design has originally been done with input from users during the development phase the following pros are normally experienced:
- Because the website was created by designers who had researched the needs of prospective users and accommodated the research results in the web page design, the website was user-centric from the start. The users experience now that the web meets their expectations and offers solutions for their problems.
- As a further result, more visitors become users and client retention is high. These loyal clients experience that products and services offered on the site as specifically beneficial for their needs. Often, these products or services will then be recommended to friends and family.
Conclusion
Nowadays, personalised marketing strategies are very successful. Online marketing is following the same trend and tries to be as user-centric as possible. For this reason, web designers include user input in the development phase to determine the type of website, content and visual material users want.