Website analysis & planning

To build a towering structure you need solid foundations.  The same rules apply to a website.  Analysing your current website and planning the new one should be the first port of call for any new web project.

For customers with existing websites we would analyse their current site: how successful it has been, how well it performs on the search engines, how user-friendly it is and, ultimately, how many leads or how much revenue it generates.   This is an important step in establishing what is required of the new website.

Analyse your competition

Most businesses are competing against other businesses so, in order to stay ahead of the game, they need to define the strengths and weaknesses of their rivals and try to exploit them.  We will help you to establish what your competitors' websites do well and where they are falling short. We want to give you a better website than your rivals' and help to position you ahead of them in the marketplace.

More than hits alone!

It is important to remember that when you are analysing your current website performance, the number of hits alone might not show the greater picture.  By using some great software, we can establish if your key pages are just being missed because the calls to action aren't clear enough.  The heat map to the right demonstrates the mouse movements around a page and "Independent research shows that there is an 84% to 88% correlation between mouse and eye movements." - reference

So you see, it's not simply a case of using page views to work out which pages are popular; we aim to establish why pages are popular and how people are arriving at them. 

Planning your new website

"Without clearly defined goals, how can you measure success?"

Once you have established the successes and failures of any previous websites and how your competitors are approaching the same problems, the next step is to start planning your new website.

The planning process used is usually dictated by the size of the project together with the budget. However, in an ideal world, we would follow this process:

• Establish the goals for the website, which often include things like:
  
  • increase traffic and conversion rates
  • reduce calls to call centres
  • reduce costs & increase efficiency in processes
  • increase sales
  • maximise exposure through Search Engine Optimisation
• Plan the structure of the website through
  
  • card sorting sessions
  • wireframing
  • creation of clear site hierarchy and weighting of important pages/calls to action - a site map, if you like.
• Creation of a Project Initiation Document (PID) - a specification of exactly what we are going to build. This forms the basis of a contract between us and your business, so we all know exactly where we stand and there are no hidden extras or charges.

Wrapping it all up

Once we've been through these key stages we will have a clear picture of exactly what is required, what the success criteria is and how we can measure that success. We will also have a signed off and agreed specification of exactly what we are going to build for you.

The upshot of this process is that you will get a better end product - a website which delivers results and will be more effective at offering a return on your investment.

To start the ball rolling and find out more about it, why not get in touch with us?