An Effective Web Design Strategy Starts with Your Brand
We’ve talked about Market Strategy, Brand Strategy and Content Strategy, so why do we need a Web Design Strategy? Because, of all of these strategies, only your Website Design Strategy is externally facing. Let’s put Website Desgn Strategy into context to clarify how these strategies work in tandem.
Using a funnel metaphor, your Market Strategy is your highest level strategic decision, in which you define the markets for your products and/or services and determine whether your market approach is industry specific, solutions or applications-focused or some combination.
Once this is determined, your Brand Strategy encompasses the way you describe what you do, for what audiences with a compettive value statement, which sets you apart from your competition. You socialize this brand internally, and externally at every customer and employee touchpoint.
The power of a relevant Content Strategy — based on sound Market and Brand Strategies — is to create a program to disseminate and exchange your valuable content across all media and over time, which leads us to your Website Design Strategy.
I’ve been reading a lot lately about a rapidly growing business trend called, “Design Thinking,” a practice widely popularized by global innovation and design consulting firm, IDEO, which describes the close collaboration of analytical and creative people who are addressing a product or service innovation problem. “Design Thinking” is often characterized by rapid prototyping or iteration until one has arrived at an innovative solution. Enterpreneurial types call it “design by failure,” with the understanding that it is through multiple failures that success is born. It is the model companies like Apple have taken and one that is headed toward the tipping point of becoming common corporate business practice in the digital age, which is tracking toward becoming the “age of innovation.”
With the growth of responsive design, inbound marketing, personalization and web analytics, websites have become more complex, time-intensive and often expensive. While most clients require these services, often budgets do not keep up with technology, so agencies like RainCastle need to work smart to provide our clients the best and most current services at a reasonable cost.
