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It’s surprising how often people say they want a website or app but can’t clearly articulate why.

Planning - is about defining the purpose of the site or app, ensuring it aligns with your business objectives, and setting a realistic budget. It involves profiling the visitors and users who will benefit you and strategising how to attract, engage, and convert them into profitable actions. It's also about positioning—beating competitors by delivering a superior value proposition.

Process - focuses on crafting a targeted message. Who is your audience, and what do they need to hear? Consider how their visit will benefit them. Brainstorm the components of your overall message, then refine it to the key points that truly matter—from their perspective, not yours. This exercise distils what’s essential, forming the basis for your initial design plan.

Pitfalls - are the traps we help you avoid, drawing on over 20 years of experience. Many common missteps include failing to identify the needs of prospective visitors, relying on assumptions rather than tests and research, defaulting to a design-by-template approach, and including features that offer little or no benefit to visitors. Overspending on creative elements, abdicating development responsibility to graphic designers, diluting key messages with unnecessary 'noise,' and neglecting to ask for the desired action are also critical mistakes.

By navigating these challenges with our guidance, you can sidestep common errors and increase your chances of success.

In the past, advertising was often a game of guesswork—nobody really knew what worked and what didn’t. The internet has changed that, removing much of the uncertainty, but only if your website’s foundation isn’t based on assumptions. That’s where data and analytics come into play.

From Guesswork to Strategy

Planning - starts with understanding keywords. A keyword is a single word or short phrase that reflects what a visitor is searching for—it’s an expression of their needs. Search engines rank web pages based on their "relevance" to these search queries and what they’ve learned about the searcher. For your site to be found, the actual and related keywords must be present in both the content and the code. Collectively, these keywords form the 'theme' of your website. Sites with a high prevalence of related keywords and high-quality incoming links are judged to be superior by search engines. Without the right keywords, your site will be a desert island since it won’t attract search traffic.

Process - involves recognising that obvious keywords are often too competitive to rank for. However, there are many more 'one-off' search keywords than the obvious ones—this is known as the 'long-tail' and is the Holy Grail of search strategy. Long-tail keywords are more specific and can often relate to a location, making it easier to rank in a city than in a state or nation. To improve your chances, keywords must be wrapped in a geographic overlay. These keywords are just as crucial in social media as they are on your website.

Pitfalls - are the common mistakes to avoid, such as making assumptions about keywords based on personal experience or trying to target a global audience when focusing on a city or suburb would be more effective. Other mistakes include targeting too few or too many unrelated keywords, misusing past data as a predictor of future search behaviour, using black-hat SEO services, failing to create keyword-rich content and social conversations, and neglecting to select keywords that imply an intent to act.

Today, we have the tools to easily discover what people are searching for, how many are searching, and where they are located. By leveraging this intelligence, considering the competition, and creating relevant content, even the smallest organisations can seize significant opportunities.

The Power of Data-Driven Strategy

Planning - is crucial. Google’s mission is to find the best website for each keyword, where 'best' means the most relevant to the visitor. It doesn’t mean the site with the flashiest graphics or the slickest gallery. Relevance is measured by the content and the quality of links and interactions. While there are no shortcuts to achieving instant and sustainable rankings, there are legitimate, proven, and effective methods. Search engines aim to reward the best sites—those most relevant to visitors—based on keywords and a concept called 'themes.' Themes encompass related keywords, terms, and phrases, and when sites are equally relevant, links determine who comes out on top.

Process - begins with research, not guesswork. Look beyond the obvious targets, and ask yourself: is the target audience large enough to matter? Don’t overlook geographic limits—overreaching can dilute your efforts. The sum of the keywords should equate to the theme. Ideally, this research and planning should occur before you begin the design process, allowing you to write content that’s tightly aligned with your theme.

Pitfalls - include falling for magic formulas or black hat SEO tactics, selecting overly general or irrelevant keywords, and using web code that search engines can’t read. Other mistakes include failing to establish a sustainable niche or sticking to a theme, neglecting dynamic content and social media linkages, overusing keywords to the point of spamming, and crafting an unrealistic strategy by targeting keywords that are too fiercely competed for.

Will your website win a design award or win you customers? The ultimate goal of commercial web design is to convert visits into actions. While aesthetics like colour schemes, layouts, graphics, and typography are important, the real challenge lies in guiding and shaping the viewer's attention. Visitors will only respond when doing so meets their needs.

Winning Customers vs. Winning Design Awards

Planning - is essential because visitors hold no value unless they act upon their visit. There are numerous ways to encourage interaction, whether through direct responses like purchases or indirect indicators of interest, such as completing a form enquiry, phoning, or providing contact details. The quality of visits is more important than the quantity—quality means that the visitor is motivated to act. Especially in complex sales, conversions rarely happen on a single visit, and your follow-up process must reflect that.

Process - involves deciding how you want visitors to interact with you, both online and offline. Do you want a direct sale, or are you aiming to start a conversation? You have mere milliseconds to engage visitors, so make your desired action clear. Keep in mind that visitors may land on any page, not just the homepage, so design your site to direct them to content that meets their needs. Don’t assume visitors will figure out what you want them to do—ask them. Think of the process as individualised direct marketing.

Pitfalls - to avoid include failing to ask for the action or offering multiple options that confuse the visitor. Ignoring keyword and activity data, assuming what will encourage visitors to act rather than testing, and speaking to a general audience instead of targeting a specific niche can all lead to missed opportunities. Blowing the budget on creative elements at the expense of research, allowing visitors to click away to social networks before taking action, and setting the wrong metrics—focusing on activity rather than actions—are also critical mistakes.

"Design" encompasses graphic design, website structure and functions, and user experience. Each element must serve the primary objective: to engage visitors and convert visits into actions. Crucially, graphic design—often viewed as mere decoration—must support this goal, not compete with it. Before diving into design, it's essential to clarify your commercial objectives; otherwise, any design brief will be fundamentally flawed. The design should align with your strategy, not just fulfil a wish list of features like galleries, blogs, or videos.

Design: Beyond Aesthetics

Planning - Design is more than just aesthetics; it encompasses graphic design, website structure, functionality, and user experience. The primary objective of design is to engage visitors and convert visits into actions. Before starting any design project, it’s crucial to define your commercial objectives clearly. Without explicit and quantifiable goals, any design brief will be fundamentally flawed. The design should align with your strategy—not just a wish list of features like galleries, blogs, or videos. For instance, “Having a gallery, a blog, and a video” is not a strategy—it’s a list of features. The true purpose of design is to guide visitors through your site to take specific actions, whether that’s making a purchase, subscribing, or engaging with your content.

Process - Effective design begins with the structure of your website. The structure informs search engines about your site’s subject (keyword theme) and directs visitors to the content that will encourage them to act. A poorly structured site can become an isolated desert island, invisible to both search engines and users. Search engines index your content and evaluate your relationships with other sites and social networks. If this ecosystem doesn’t make sense, you won’t rank well in search results. Visitors need to be quickly directed to content that interests them; otherwise, they will leave without taking action. Your site should have a clear, short path from landing to the call-to-action. Content plays a vital role in this process—it’s the lifeblood of your online presence. Static content informs search engines, while dynamic content supports ongoing conversations. Core pages should primarily feature static text to avoid confusing search engines, and keywords must be embedded within the text, headers, and code. The call-to-action should be a central focus, guiding visitors to take specific actions. Creative elements like style, images, and graphic design should support, not overwhelm, your value proposition.

Pitfalls - Many common pitfalls can derail the effectiveness of your design. These include failing to clearly define your objectives and strategy, assuming that design alone will drive conversions, and overloading your site with creative elements that don’t support your goals. Other pitfalls include using a website structure that confuses search engines or visitors, neglecting the importance of keyword themes, and failing to create a clear call-to-action. Overuse of graphics can slow down your site, leading to higher bounce rates. Additionally, many sites make the mistake of directing traffic away from their site to social networks before visitors have taken any action. Social networks should be used to drive traffic to your site, where the focus should be on converting that traffic into meaningful actions.

We genuinely want to help you succeed, and to do that we have to be as motivated about your mission as you are.

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