Your website is no longer just a place to list basic information about your association or business. It’s the public face of your organization, and a place for your members to find valuable, up-to-date information and resources about their membership benefits and career field.
The clunky, “brochure” website of the past is no longer a viable way to represent your organization. If you’re working to redesign your website to bring it up to speed for 2013, there are a few things to consider before getting started.
1. Content Strategy
Your website is only as good as the content it contains. Therefore, you must have a content strategy in place before designing your website. This theory of web design is called the Content Out Methodology. This methodology puts the design emphasis on your content, rather than the traditional approach of placing content into a predefined design and layout. Click here for ways to leverage content that you already have.
2. Thinking Mobile First
With the growth of mobile Internet use (see the chart at the right), thinking of tablet or smart phone web users is more important than ever. The Mobile First approach, which has a heavy emphasis on the readability and accessibility of your website’s content, starts with focusing on the smallest device first (mobile first) and working your way up from there. Because you are working with a much smaller canvas to start off with, it helps to keep your focus on prioritizing web features that are important and useful to the user, rather than on the design or frills that end up cluttering a mobile screen.
3. Project Outline and Details
Re-designing a website is a hefty job that requires a lot of planning before work can begin. Once you have your content and mobile strategies in place it's time to assess the purpose and goals of the website.
Start by looking at your vision and mission statements. These will help you develop a purpose for your freshly designed website. After that, list your goals. Do you want to increase membership? Solicit donations? Gain exposure for your members' research?
Next, in order to measure the performance of the website and to align with your goals you will need tools in place for measurement such as Google Analytics.
Since you've already identified your audience while developing your content strategy, you know who you want your site users to be. Now you need to identify what they'll be doing on your website. Start a list of site requirements needed. For example, do you need a store where users can purchase products (physical or digital products such as a download)? A member-only section or a press room? Identify the primary action that you want a user to take when they land on your homepage. This action will likely be different for each type of identified user (i.e., member vs. non-member).
Now that all the preliminary work has been done, you're prepared to talk with a website developer who will work alongside you to build the website. The one thing left for you to do is to make sure that once the website has launched you continue to update the content on the website — there is nothing worse than a website that remains static.
If you're ready to start thinking about a website redesign, read more about AH's web design services. Or get in touch with us at inquire@ahint.com or 856-439-0500.
