A website should be a ‘shop window’ for your organisation and should have an instant attraction as to why that visitor should use your company. There should be a simple action that you want a visitor to your site to perform. Whether it be to pick up the phone and enquire further, fill in an online form, purchase a product directly, or even come back to the site following further research.
Making your website easy to read and navigate with simple messages is key. You don’t need to include everything about who you are or what you do on a homepage.
At Happy, we have a detailed briefing structure which we run through with potential new clients for web design. It’s not simply a case of asking what buttons they would like in the top navigation and how big the logo should be in the top left corner. We listen to what the website needs to do for the user.
Every website we design and build is bespoke from the outset. Otherwise, in our opinion, we’re not helping that particular client to market themselves. We always think outside of the box and always consider the end user – not necessarily what the client thinks is the right thing to do. Our team of online marketing gurus are here to advise, and will often (in the nicest possible way, obviously!) take a brief from a client, and send it back with our thoughts and recommendations as to how they can best spend their budget, before coming to a Happy agreement and commencing with the work.
It is through using this approach to new websites that we have come up with a really fun and exciting way of hitting the brief and creating some lovely sites. So much so, that my first project in my new role within Happy was to start the process of giving our own website the once over and creating something that really sells us as an award-winning design agency. One that will make us stand out from the crowd, and really shows off the happy philosophy that flows through the team.
The process started with a full research and critique of our site to determine what was working, what wasn’t, what we like, what we don’t and what we think our new site would need and how we could improve it. But we are not the ones looking for a design agency, so we had to think like a visitor to our site. It’s not about what we want (although some of the ideas would be lovely!)
Following this initial ‘fact finding’ mission, we then set about creating a site map (simply on a white board) to highlight the pages, links and navigation that would be most beneficial on our new website. A few rubbings out and re-wording later, we had our map. This is how our new site would be structured. An air of excitement filled the Happy studio as this meant we could soon move on to the look and feel of the site – which is always the fun part!
Next came our ‘Happy Storm’. We do this with every new brief, and it involves getting all members of the Happy team around our ‘relaxation area’ (which is a posh way of saying the sofas) and sharing thoughts and ideas on how we see elements working. We love this part as it tends to involves biscuits, but mainly because there are no bad ideas – everything that is brought to the table is taken on board, regardless of how weird and wonderful it may be. Sometimes these are the best ideas!
Our Happy Storms always through up some laughs, but more importantly, some ideas which may just trigger something in another member of the team’s brain which releases that brief hitting concept. These concepts are then drawn and written up with full rationales, visuals, examples of cross-media ideas and even how it could roll out in media that the client hasn’t even thought about or even knew existed!
We are treating ourselves as a client in this new website brief, so we are now at the stage where we are selling in the concepts we have come up with. Once we are all bought in as a team, and we have ‘tweaked’ the strongest ideas, we can then move on to starting the actual designs of the homepage. We can’t wait to see what the guys are going to come up with! The new website should be up and running soon, and don’t worry, the Happy blog will still be a major force in our online presence!
It is this fun yet detailed process, which means we have made sure we are delivering the best possible outcome to the brief. And with this being the approach we take to all our client briefs, we love to get clients involved as much as possible in the early stages of design and development.
We’re currently working on some really nice digital work for both clients and ourselves, so my new role is certainly keeping me busy! But I’m more than happy to talk about any new projects that maybe in your pipeline…
Happy Creative, a full service marketing agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact us please go to www.happy-creative.co.uk
