The Strategis approach to website design

There are five fundamental elements that are consistently evident in every effective website. These five elements are presented in order of importance.

1. Findable. The premise of the movie Field of Dreams was that if ‘you build it they will come.’ That philosophy just does not apply to your website. Visitors must be able to easily find your site. This does not mean that they should be able to easily find it when they type in your website’s address. Rather, it is critical for your website to rank high enough with the search engines so that your website shows up on the first page of the search results.A website may have killer graphics, compelling content and great video clips—but if no one can find it—it becomes a case of . . . ‘does a tree in the forest make a sound when it falls and no one is there to hear it?’Okay, so what does this all mean? Integral to the success of your website (in generating sales leads and increasing conversions) is the need to develop a promotional strategy that will drive visitors to it. This means implementing ways to announce to the whole world that you exist and where to find you. (See Search Engine Optimization for details.)Increasing the findability of your website also means it needs to integrate strategically with your other marketing initiatives. In turn, these other activities should promote and highlight how to find your website.

Strategis’ conversion specialists will integrate proven calls-to-action throughout your website. Each page will encourage a customer action that translates into a purchase, an estimate request, phone call, or online contact.

Strategis’ team will develop your website so that the world will beat a path to your homepage.

2. Useability/ Navigation. Everyone uses the Internet for two basic reasons: 1) to find stuff, and 2) for fun. They’ve landed on your website. That’s good. However, if visitors cannot easily find what they’re looking for on your site—they’ll leave. Numerous studies have shown that you have 3 – 7 seconds to catch and keep visitors attention. If you don’t achieve it in those 3 – 7 seconds, they’re off to look at one of your competitors.Therefore, the Strategis will invest the necessary time to understand your company’s persona (brand), your products and/or services, as well as the buying behaviour of your target audience, so that an intuitive, easy-to-use navigation system is developed The more accurate the customer profile the easier it becomes to design the site navigation and information hierarchy that will make your site easy to navigate.This exercise represents the bedrock for your website. Therefore, we begin the design phase by identifying the most effective ways to present the site’s content so that we achieve optimum usability and ease of navigation. During this phase we will create simple diagrams that map the site’s information flow and hierarchy, often referred to as site-maps, and review these with you.

Your Strategis-E team will develop the navigation system for your website that will endure and enable you to build on it for years to come.

3. Compelling Content. The information you present on your website needs to be relevant to your target audience, and compelling. Most of your content should be ‘need to know’, rather than ‘nice to know’ information. It needs to be accurate and current, rather than stale and clichéd.
It needs to be complete; which means you need to anticipate your visitors questions and answer them. They shouldn’t have to leave your website and search elsewhere for the answers. If they do, they may never come back.The information should be easy to scan. Research has shown that Internet users only read about 28% of what’s on a webpage. The content should also be sales-purposed; everything said and done on your site is for the purpose of generating leads and to help move prospects quickly through the sales cycle.

Our copywritiers will make sure that 100% of your website’s content is high impact, relevant and scannable information that helps move visitors through the sales cycle more quickly—even if they only scan 28%!

4. Visual Appeal. When visitors land on a company’s website and find an ugly duckling, it’s highly unlikely that they will stick around. The online searching and shopping experience of Canadians is one of the highest in the world. Consumers are quick to pick up on hokey looking websites with outdated information. We all want to do business with a company who lives and works in the second decade of the 21st century.
This is where the graphic designer steps onto the web development scene. Their role is to bring your website to life with colour, images and other design strategies that captures your company’s brand and makes your website very attractive. Our team will brainstorm with you on the design and we will provide sample pages for your review and final approval.

Give Strategis the opportunity to build or redesign your website . . . with movie star appeal!

5. Technically Sound. You depend on your website. So do your clients and prospects. Therefore, coding of your website needs to be clean and lean (not clumsy and loose). It needs to meet the standards established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The selected host for your website should be robust, provide 24/7 troubleshooting, and have an stellar record of no hiccups; no downtime; no data losses; or, other failures.We can care for all of the required webmaster and related technical services that will keep your website up and running 24/7, 365 days of the year.