Understanding your website and the role it plays in advertising your brand and your business is an important step to getting the most out of your online presence. Far too often, companies leave their outdated sites to languish in neglect, giving any user who stumbles across it a negative impression of the company. Clunky user experience, blogs which haven’t been updated in years and unattractive, outdated designs can impact a user’s view of your brand, and in the worst case, make them leave your site out of apathy or frustration.
Looking at your site from a user’s point of view can help you figure out where the pain points might be, and how to fix them. For example, is your navigation long winded and hard to suss out? Are your pages full of superfluous information before actually getting to the point? Issues like this can be simple to fix, but can make a world of difference to your visitors.
We’ve worked with such ailments before, and we’re no strangers to helping fix them. A good example is a recent project we undertook for our clients at OEMA. The bones of the existing site were good, but the design was dated and the navigation needed tweaking to shift unimportant links and ensure the most important pages were front and centre. By moving pages such as Policies into the footer and removing the neglected News page, it meant that more detail could be offered depending on how the users wanted to navigate the site, either by service or sector. A more informative and personal touch was added with the About and Approach pages, with clever ways to expand content containers so the pages don’t look too text-heavy. The end result is sleek, modern and positions the OEMA brand as a true leader in their industry.
At Frost, we build our websites from the ground up, and never before a good look at the underlying brand strategy. When we do begin the website phase of a brand project, we start with a deep dive into our client’s existing website, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. In our consultation phase, we discuss with our clients what they’d like their site to achieve and how we can help them get there. This helps to inform not only the initial planning phase, including a sitemap, but also the wireframes and designs that come after, ensuring that every step is influenced by creating the most positive user experience possible. Once built, the site is tested to iron out any kinks before launching to the world.
Ultimately, the audience is the most important factor to consider when working with your online presence, and so understanding how they interact with it and your brand as a whole is key to crafting a site which promotes your business in the best light.
If you need help revitalising your brand, both online and off, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Frost team to see how we can help you.