I started learning simple web design. Then I learned more complex areas like open source web development. When I started PHP3 it was the preferred flavor and not much was happening in the CMS space. Oh how much has changed since then! But it's not just technology that has changed over the years, our overall approach to custom application web design services has changed over time as well. Today I want to analyze two approaches to web design strategy. The first is the traditional approach that we have all focused on for many years. The second is a modern approach that sees web design as it has always been, although many have never admitted it, which is an iterative process. Let's dive in!
Traditional web design
From the beginning, marketers and business owners took an approach to website design that was comparable to any other physical asset in their business. They saw a website as something to create, configure, and forget about. This concept worked well for a long time. Businesses go through a design cycle every few years, resulting in a completely new website every time.
How did these processes work? Well, the strategy has often been driven by business interests. And by the term "commercial interests" I mean, in many cases, the whim of one or two people in a certain company. Early web design projects were often led by an entrepreneurial ego. Not always, but often. The strategy employed was somehow based on vanity: looking better than the other (that is, the competition) and producing an experience that showed the maturity of the company or some other artistic "vibe" management that could be expressed wanted.
These projects were often large, almost always complete redesigns or complete conversions. As such, they were costly and life-long endeavors that often put a bad taste in the mouths of the people responsible for putting them in place.
Companies have been notoriously bad at hiring agencies or designers / developers to work on these projects. Procurement was a disaster and often resulted in a poor RFP process, resulting in the lowest bidder taking a project home and not having the client adequately consider the agency's skills or creativity.
These factors led to the traditional "one-time" approach whereby clients closed their project, pushed it live, and let it sit and age over time. We all did ..! I was guilty of the same with our own website. It was comfortable to sit back, loosen up, and do your thing.
Here's the problem ...
The market is constantly evolving. And your website should too. The traditional model eliminated the idea of constant monitoring and improvement based on data. This led companies to argue about their website design project because they saw it as an occasional opportunity to get it right. And most of the time, other business challenges got in the way that resulted in your distraction from completing or completing the project. In fact, there must be a better way?
The modern approach
The modern approach could also be called the more sensible approach. It makes sense from many perspectives. It's a way to get less of what they'd like to chew on in terms of project scope for companies. From a marketing perspective, it allows for constant experimentation. There is no single technique or strategy that is defined as "modern web design", but some concepts that are strategically combined define this modern approach. Some have tried to define this methodology in a single framework, eg. Eg B. Growth oriented design, although there are some flaws in the way they try to implement it. Ultimately, this is a philosophy that is more than just one way of doing things.
Focus on the audience
In many ways, outdated web design projects were internal. A CEO wanted to redesign or a marketer wanted to establish important product details. A business owner wanted to sell products or there were a different number of changes that had more to do with themselves. However, no one really looked at the end user. In the early days, clients didn't bother with their own analysis when considering a design process. In many ways, we have catered to clients' personal preferences rather than challenging them to think of the client. I think the agencies were part of the problem.
Today is very different. Data rules and internal strategies follow data. We are no longer in an innovation economy, but in an incremental optimization economy. As a result, website owners are more in tune with what customers want to do on their websites and are more likely to listen to analytics to optimize those experiences.
In some ways, it is sad that we are behind this innovative era. We started this company before mobile devices had web browsers and long before websites had to respond to all these different devices. At the risk of beating myself up, this was before CSS was a central part of our design processes. You will be amazed at what I can do with nested tables!
The current environment has also changed dramatically. Without getting too involved, we are no longer interested in fully advancing the possibilities of online experiences. We have replaced Flash with HTML5 and improved our core libraries to gain experience, mainly to make our lives easier. Of course, we also have more sophisticated CMS platforms. But we have not developed the medium further. This, in turn, is due to our optimization economy, which is focused on the audience. While it's great that everyone is working hard to make things better, I miss the old days when we had something new and innovative to play with every year. For the moment, however, we remain focused on our audience, its goals and objectives until a new round of innovation is presented to us.
Get started fast
Today, projects seem to start and then iterate at a faster rate than before. Mainly because the new methodology is designed for iteration, it takes some of the focus off to make it perfect the first time you launch it. I find that many projects today start with migrations from old systems, like archaic CMS platforms, to new ones, where they can then quickly iterate because the foundation is more robust and flexible (more on this in a minute). We talked about exactly this project scenario on this blog a few weeks ago.
If you feel like you are moving quickly on a project, you are probably working at a pace that is common today. Knowing that you can react and make changes later changed the game for website design projects. You can tear it down and let it break. I find this speed to be very positive for almost everyone involved up to the first deployment. Agencies love to produce quickly, and clients must show management profits. A quick migration or launchpad site that is designed, developed, and implemented doesn't have to be perfect to build momentum and start making constant improvements.
Iterate early and often
As long as you have a solid foundation to build on, the iteration will literally start on day one, if not earlier. I firmly believe that the current client / agency relationship is not an all-in-one relationship. Today it's about smaller upfront commitments and longer-term maintenance / continuous improvement models. Marketing teams must continue to respond quickly to changes in the market, new approaches to competition, and the availability of new techniques and tools.
We see it on our own website, where never a week goes by without optimizing any element of our content, web browsing, search engine optimization, or marketing automation processes. And we are a small company ... you can imagine what groups of companies should do. If you are a commercial marketer and don't get involved in these iterative changes, you will definitely be left behind.
Make the transition
If you're an organization that has traditionally focused on the old style of running a web design project, chances are you're somewhere in the redo cycle. Especially since the process never changes. With each turn of the cycle you can move to this new methodology. However, to do this, you will need to make some adjustments to your technology, company culture, and marketing strategy.
Step 1: adapt culturally
This is an important consideration. Before you can move into the modern world of web design, you must culturally adapt your organization to the concept. This means accepting a method to do something quickly that is based on data points, repeats quickly, and knows that perfection is a moving goal. For the most part, the administration is slower to adapt to this concept. Everyday technicians, designers and marketers are already determined to participate. Therefore, it is up to those interested in changing their company's methodology to educate and convince management that this is the path that leads to faster success, faster learning, and most importantly, an economic decision. smarter with one. demonstrable ROI leads. Easier said than done, I know. But it is achievable.
Step 2: plan and budget accordingly
The old method was expensive and there were always high start-up costs. The new world has many more moving parts, and running costs are spread out over time. First, you have royalties. Many parts of the digital ecosystem need a license today. CMS, marketing automation, analytics, asset management, more analytics ... this all adds up and needs to be budgeted for.
Because this approach is iterative, you should also plan ahead for what help and assistance you will need. It does this in a number of ways. You can hire an internal team to help you, or you can hire an agency. Of course, we find it difficult to be impartial about what you should do. But seriously, agencies offer you the flexibility of a versatile team of experts in various disciplines who can support and support your ongoing needs. Individual employees tend to be somewhat more limited in their skills, which can hinder progress.
Regardless of how you do it, you need to budget and plan for ongoing support so you can make the quick and iterative changes your new methodology requires.
Step 3: build the base
Finally, as you transition to this new workflow, you need to make sure you have the right technology. You want a website with the right technology, something stable, compatible and flexible. You want to make sure you have the right tools like marketing automation, CRM, analytics, etc. Having a foundation is critical to success. So your first project should solve fundamental problems with your tech stack while getting to market quickly. If you do this correctly, it will be easier to work with everything later.
