Always stay focused on the customer’s user journey. Whenever you are organizing content for a new or updated website, make sure you’re evaluating the user journey to provide the right information to the right users at the right time. Sounds simple, right? Not always. You should always begin with a website strategy that will help establish your navigation, creative direction, Development/UX/UI, etc. This is an important first step to go through to make sure you’ve thought through the user journey.
The homepage is where most of your traffic will land on first – organize your homepage hierarchically so that the most pertinent and important information is up front and center. This could summarize your key differentiators from your competitors, your value statement, how your service/product solves your customer’s pain points, or the latest news and updates – it all depends on your key business goals and target audience. Starting with a wireframe can be helpful in organizing all of your sections up-front before jumping into design. From there, you’ll want the user to flow through a series of other key focus areas of your business so that they can get a good overview of who you are, what you do, and why you do it, all from your homepage. From there, they should be able to link through to other areas of the site that go into more detail. Similarly, it is extremely important to organize your navigation in a way that is intuitive and clearly guides the user to the information they are looking for. I’ve seen some cool looking websites that use cryptic wording or bleeding edge navigation styles… Yeah, they look cool but they can also make it 10X harder for your potential customers to find the information they are seeking. As always, it depends on the amount of content you have, your target audience’s intent, and your business goals.
– Hannah Taylor, Director of Production Services
Leave a Reply