Website Design – Have you tried the workshop approach?

Is it time to rethink your website? Maybe you know exactly what you want, or don’t know where to start. Whichever you identify with, we know that embarking on a website project may seem daunting, regardless of the size of your business or your specific requirements, but it doesn’t have to be.

Let’s start by looking at where you and your business fit in:

1. You’re starting up and need a new website. Exciting times!
2. You’re an established and successful business with a new proposition that your website needs to promote.
3. You’re relatively happy with your website, but it’s time for a bit of a design refresh.
4. You’re worried your existing website is actually hampering your growth, even impacting your brand, so a totally new design and a build structure/functionality overhaul are needed.

Our approach

Over the years, we’ve approached new design for websites and web development requirements from our clients in a variety of ways. One of the most targeted, effective and enjoyable for everyone involved is to take the workshop approach.

Immersing yourself in a workshop before preparing your website design brief will allow you to take a step back, carefully consider your requirements and exchange views with other project stakeholders; you can then feel confident in deciding exactly what’s needed in terms of:

1. Positioning
2. Storytelling and associated content
3. Navigation
4. Functionality (to create a seamless user experience for your target audience and also your internal website manager)

So what happens in one of our website design workshops? A lot in a relatively short space of time. To allow for initial ideas and discussions to simmer and mature, we usually split the workshop into two sessions – a couple of hours each session usually does it.

Before the workshops can start, we ask everyone involved to do a little light homework to cover the following:

Workshop #1 – Personas:

1. Think about customers, employees, partners and suppliers
2. Prepare three wishes or needs that they would have of your new website
3. Answer each wish or need above by listing ways in which your company’s offering can help your chosen target audience

Workshop #2 – Inspiration audit:

1. Select two competitors whose websites (or elements within) you admire, and prepare a short list of reasons why. Then create a mini audit on: what they stand for, what their key offering is, and what their key messages and tone of voice are
2. Excluding competitor websites, select one website you like, and provide three reasons why you like this specific website

One of our remote website design workshops, with our client Presspart.

The result of this exercise is always thoroughly focused, collaborative and engaging workshop sessions.

What happens next?

Once all ideas are in the can, we extract and summarise findings from the workshop sessions and put together a comprehensive report to discuss and agree on key points. These will then pave the way for a rich and comprehensive new website design and development brief, so get in touch if you think we can help you revitalise your online presence.