The Best Web Design is NOT About You, It's About Them

Written by Travis Pryor, Digital Account Strategist

Our goal when starting a new client project is to get to know our clients as an organization, as a brand and as a partner.  By gaining insights into their digital footprint, we begin to understand who their target audience is and the goals associated with them.  Part of this process is to not only develop a relationship with our clients, but also to gain an understanding of what is best for their clients. It's not about you or your personal preferences it's about them. We care about your clients a lot.

What is the Bitwise Design Process?

Often we think we know what are clients or web visitors are thinking, what they are needing, or how they are going to interact with our site.  But the truth is, what our target audience want and what we think they want are often very different.

Because of this we rely on discovery work during our Onboard Discovery Phase to find out who are the "right" people?  By completing (but not limited to) Customer Personas, Website Audits (Try One out for Free), and Competitive Analysis we can design for the client’s target audience. We don't want to just generate any traffic to your site, we want the right traffic

Think of it like this:

You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint. (Tweet This)

In the same way, we wouldn’t build a website without doing discovery work. It is the plan that dictates the entire site.

Our design team works alongside the digital marketing team, development team and project management team to ensure that all designs meet the client’s requests, function correctly while providing a unique user experience for the client’s target audience.

The design team sketches out ideas and wireframes (Nerd talk for black and white image that displays the functional elements of a website) to get an idea of the site's structure and functionality based off the findings and data from the discovery phase.

Wireframes then turn to high resolution mockups that our services team (digital marketing, development, project management) collaborates on to ensure client needs and target audience needs are met, before being presented to the client.

Depending on client feedback, designs can go through a revision phase where changes are made.  Often, font colors, image sizes, etc. are changed at this point in the process.  However, with data from the discovery work chances are we are going the right direction, but focusing on our client relationships, we want to allow for changes to be made.  Just so long as we are not altering what the target audience wants.

After design approval, the design team hand offs the project to development to implement functionally.

So...Why Should You Follow Your Design Plan?

As we discussed earlier, it is imperative that you know who your target audience is and what they want.

Should you choose to not know who your target audience is or disregard their feedback during the web design process you will not win. (Tweet This)

We have seen this story before and it often ends in frustrations and re-redesigns. We complete the Onboard Discovery Phase and share the insights with our clients on what their target audience wants.  Clients love the insight as they can use it in other aspects of their marketing efforts. However, 6 weeks later, the “high” has faded and the desire to do what their target audience wants is gone. Now it’s back to what they want and what they think “looks good” and is “functional.”

We don’t like these stories.

We want you to succeed. We want your target audience to have a great experience on your website, with your content, with your brand and organization.

We care about your clients a lot.

 For more information on Onboarding Discovery Phase, let's chat. 

At Bitwise, we like to focus on what is important: relationships. Rather than being seen as just another “vendor,” we like to "Partner" with our clients to build a relationship based on trust.  Specializing in Marketing, Creative, and Custom Development, we are your trusted Carmel web design and development solution specialists.