5 Tips to improve your next web design brief

It’s no surprise that producing a new website is a large investment cost. Alongside the large costs involved, it is a minefield when choosing the right web design agency to carry out the required work. From my experience of working as Operations Manager at Voodoochilli, I wanted to share my knowledge on how to prepare for your next website project to get the best return on investment (ROI).

Before you set off filling out contact forms to find agencies to work with – you need to plan the project and write a brief. By writing a project brief alone, you are guaranteed to have a more successful outcome. Here are my 5 tips to help improve your web design brief.

Benjamin Franklin – ‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’

Determine the value of your current website and set a budget

What is your website worth to your business? Is your website the main source of income? Does your website help secure sales?

You may already have tools integrated into your site to report on conversion rates, sales figures, number of visits and number of users. This information can be very useful when you are calculating a budget as it will give you a greater understanding of how your website is performing for your business.

Use your knowledge about your industry to determine an appropriate budget to complete the project. No matter how big or small your budget is – there will be agencies willing to work with you.

Learn about your users and how they use your website

When it comes to your users, you are the expert. There are many different ways to collect data about the users of your site and each one has its own place.

Website tracking and feedback

Google Analytics

This helps you see the amount of time your users spend on each page, the bounce rate and the user journey through your site. This can give you an indication of how much time you have to grab the attention of your user and also where your traffic comes from.

Another helpful piece of data is knowing what device is most popular for your website. B2B websites are normally accessed via desktop whereas B2C is more likely to be mobile.

Hotjar

Probably the most underrated tool for optimising pages for user experience. This tool allows you to produce page heatmaps and see anonymous real-time recordings of how a user interacts with your website. If users skip past lots of texts frequently, you know to limit the amount of copy on your next website design.

Customer feedback

This option works best because you’re asking those who have already bought into your product or service. For example, you might have a client portal for downloading documents or you could have an eCommerce site. Remember to ask your customers to be honest and provide you with good and bad feedback so you can improve your service.

Combine these three options above and you should get a list of improvements to focus on, similar to the example below:

• Improve engagement on landing pages by optimising it for mobile users
• Increase the conversion rate on the service pages by redesigning the page with less copy and more imagery
• Increase organic search traffic by improving the Search Engine Optimisation across the site ensuring pages follow all essential technical SEO practices
• Improve the customer experience by designing a dynamic form to find the best product based on their needs

If you do not know what would be a suitable solution to your problem you can list your problems and an agency will be able to give you their suggestions.

User personas

By creating fictional personas of your target audience you will be able to identify the reason for their visit, their goals and the thoughts that may run through their mind whilst on your website. 

For example, if one of your personas might be unsure about making a purchase because they have never heard of your brand before – you require social proof to help them gain trust in your brand.

Another example could be that your audience does not have much time to look for information. This would mean that you would need to focus on your information delivery methods and provide relevant information in bite-sized chunks or a data capture form to send them a brochure via email to look at later.

Competitor research

Visit your competitors’ websites. Note any key elements that you think work well and you will start to build up a feature list that will help the web agency.

A feature list will help the web agency understand the level of technical skill you require from your new website. It can also help identify any features that your business may not be utilising.

Prepare content for your website design

One of the most frequent issues faced during a web development project is that content isn’t prepared for when the agency requires it. Some agencies prefer to see examples of content prior to the design phase or some agencies prefer to suggest content themselves. 

We would always suggest preparing some content prior to any designs so it’s clear what type of technical information needs to be displayed as well as understanding the vision of the client.

Set a timeline you can adhere to

Unless you have a larger budget and you trust the agency completing your website will be able to deliver everything for you just the way you want it, make sure you have time to be involved in the project.

Out of all of the above points, this is the most important one and it’s not one you can easily throw money at. 

If you or your business struggle on time or know you are not going to have time to sign off items right away, either employ a creative steer/project manager to help manage the project from your side or make the agency aware that sign-off times may be longer than normal.

As a minimum, you should be able to commit to the following:

• Kick-off meeting or discovery
• Catch up meetings
• Review the designs
• Test the website
• Review amendments
• Provide detailed feedback

Conclusion

Using these tips you are guaranteed a more successful and rewarding project. You may want to hand over all the responsibility to the agency but you need to be willing to pay for it.

Be open and honest with how experienced you are along with how much time you have set aside for the project. Any agency will take this into consideration and ensure that both party’s expectations are met.