Creating your new website – 8 questions to ask yourself first

You know you need a new website. What now? Creating a new website is a big job and requires a lot of organisation, planning and business alignment. It’s such a big task that it’s hard to know where to start. To help you out, we have put together 8 questions to ask yourself when designing a new website. Answering these questions will arm you with everything that you and a creative agency would ever need to efficiently and effectively craft your new website.

8 questions you need to ask yourself before creating a website for your business

1. Why do you need a new website?

Before starting a new website you need to understand why your current site is unsatisfactory. Is the design outdated? Is the platform it’s built on not fulfilling the businesses needs anymore? Has your business simply outgrown it? Is it not performing well?

There can be a million different reasons why you need a new website, understanding what these are is key to solving and creating a website that supports your business’ and customer’s needs.

2. What are the goals for the new website? 

Once you’ve identified your issues, what do you need to do to fix them? There is no quick answer and sometimes you might not be able to answer this question, but that’s okay, that’s where agencies like Honest Fox can help you out.

However, it helps to know what a successful website looks like to you. Identify what requirements it needs to fulfil and what you want your new website to achieve. This could be a better user journey, user-friendly UI design, improved SEO or updated content that attracts your audience.

3. Who will be in charge of the new website?

Having a champion that can take responsibility for the website from start to finish ensures that the project will run smoothly. This person can feed back to the company and wider stakeholders, but serves as the main point of contact between the company and the agency creating the new site. A new website is a big project to take on, so making sure that this person is qualified and has enough time and resources to take on such a task is key to success.

4. Who is the website for and what are their needs?

Looking at who is going to use your website is very important to understanding what is required from the site. Who is your key audience? Do your users have any special requirements? Are they there to buy a product? Are they there to consume content? The better you understand your audience the more deliberate and effective your website will be. Having your customer experience mapped out will be a huge advantage.

5. Will an MVP (minimum viable product) do for now?

Weighing up must-haves and nice-to-haves can help get your website out the door quickly. You can create a basic functioning website and slowly add on the nicer features further down the track. This helps to expose your website to your existing and new customers, so you can get feedback and update it as needed. It’s important to have the mindset that your website is always improving – not just created once and left to sit and work.

However, a thorough UX design audit and customer analysis will always be necessary if you want to create a successful website that attracts the right audience, regardless of the amount of details and features you are going to implement from the start.

6. What websites do you like or not like and why?

This could be a feature on a site or a general look and feel. Do your research and keep an eye out for inspiration, outside at your competitors or even inside on your current site. Knowing what changes you’d like to make helps the designer building your site to make better informed decisions. That being said, stay open-minded to new suggestions and best practices. Whatever design or features you like might not automatically appeal to your actual audience but it will support the direction you want to take with your business.

7. Do you need anything in addition to the website?

If you are upgrading your website, there is a chance that you might want extra services that surround a new site, for example advertising on Google, doing a content migration, implementing a new tech stack or integrating a different CMS.

Honest Fox offers Strategy and Marketing services, alongside Design and Technology. The right partner for your project will recommend the fitting tools and softwares for your individual business and suggest solutions you might not even be aware of.

8. What are your budget/timeline requirements?

Knowing your budget and time requirements will help inform the design process of the site. For example, a larger budget means more hours can be spent on more people working on the site, meaning more features and more experts giving their input for best practices. While a smaller budget will mean less people working on a site with fewer functions and customisations.

This ties in well to the MVP question, you may want to go with a smaller budget initially and slowly work your way up to a larger site later on. Either way, it is important to determine your budget and the features you can’t go without.

So there you have it, 8 questions to ask yourself when designing a website. Hopefully this gives you confidence in the direction of your new website, and helps you pick the best suited agency for your business’ needs. 

If you need a website built or have questions how to set up a website, feel free to get in touch and we can get to the bottom of it together.