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Building a great website in three(ish) steps

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So what is the “right way” to create a new website? Well, it’s not always an easy process – but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be simple.

When it comes to creating that new website that will help people to engage with your service more effectively, help you sell more of your product range, or widen access and participation, we believe it’s as simple as 1-2-3. Or more accurately, as simple as How, What, Why.

Last week, we were really pleased to be asked to talk at the FACT Connects event, hosted by Liverpool-based arts and digital media organisation (and ICE partner) FACT, to an audience of arts organisations, small businesses and social enterprises, where we outlined this simple approach.

You can view our presentation or see the live blog here.

It’s all about answering the What, the How, and most importantly of all the Why about your new website.

So often, people think very clearly in terms of the “What” of their website. It’s easy to think that you want your website to look great, and to have good links to social media channels, and to allow you to sell your product.

It’s also pretty easy to think in terms of the “How” of your website. So you know what your deadlines are, you know what you’ve got to spend on it, and you know you want to make buying stuff or getting in contact with you easy.

However, far too often, that’s where the thought process can end – leaving you with an incomplete picture as you move towards creating the online presence that will define you and be your primary method of audience engagement for years to come.

Before you even consider, the What or the How, it’s imperative to ensure you have a clear articulation of the Why of your website.

By answering the Why first, the How and the What should become clear naturally.

The Why of creating a website is at once the most overlooked and the most important question you need to answer when you decide to embark on the new journey of creating your website. The Why of your website relates to the fundamental values of who you are, who your audiences are, your reason to exist, and what your organisational priorities are.

Without understanding the Why, you won’t know your audience, their aspirations, their needs, or what the true objective for the initiative is in the first place. When you consider the investments in time, people, and money organisations put into creating their websites; the fact that this simple question is so often not answered should cause real concern!

So the Why is what it’s all about, and the single most important question that you need to answer before doing anything, before figuring out the What or the How.

It is however, also, probably the most difficult question of all to answer.

Thankfully, we have a set of values, and a way of thinking, that runs through everything we do.

It’s called our people-shaped approach. We take it with every challenge. And we see time and time again how it can help to answer and articulate that Why for organisations large and small.

By approaching your website by taking the approach of gathering insight from your audiences, co-creating solutions with them, and putting together a production plan that is both detailed, and contextualised with the overall objectives and values that underpin your entire organisation, the people-shaped approach will provide you with that platform that is fundamentally grounded in the user experience – meaning that you’ll have a website that continues to work for you and your audiences.

Once you’ve done all this and you’ve answered the Why, What, and How through this process, you might then think your  journey is finished.

Well unfortunately not.

The bad news is that you’ll never be finished – just as people change the way they interact with each other online, you’ll need to ensure you keep abreast of the latest development in technology and constantly tweak your site to meet your audiences in their spaces.

The good news however is that, wherever your audiences are, whether they’re still clinging on to Myspace, or are fully geared up members of the Instagram and Pinterest generation, you have the right platform to continue to engage with them. You know them. You understand them, and you’ve worked with them right at the beginning to help establish the terms of your relationships with them.

This means they’ll continue to love you, to engage with you, and to advocate for you online – all resulting in your organisation being at the forefront of people’s lives, and the inevitable growth for you being the main outcome.

So wherever you are in your journey in creating your new website, whatever your priorities are, and whoever your audiences are – get people shaped.

It’s as easy as Why, What, How….

 

Ben Capper, Principal Marketing Practitioner, ben.capper@icecreates.com

& John Walker, Web Developer, john.walker@icecreates.com



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