Web Design

At If You Build It, we do more than just design and develop websites. We take into account all the factors that make a website successful. From the creative process through to ongoing management, we’re able to step in at any time to ensure your website is one of your business’ most valued and useful tools.

Listed below, you’ll find a few considerations we’ll discuss with you prior to starting your website project, depending on your needs.

Design For All Devices

Thanks to smartphones and tablets, the way people are surfing the web today is dramatically changing. In addition to looking up content on their computers, people now browse websites while on the train to work, or in front of the TV at night on the couch.

Consequently, it’s crucial to have a website that performs across all devices. Not only does your website now have to suit smaller displays, but it also needs to function via a touchscreen. For example, dropdown menus and hover features normally accessed with a mouse do not work on mobile devices. Plus, text can be hard to read, magnify and/or navigate.

Your web design team can ensure your website works on smartphones and tablets by implementing ‘responsive design’ or building a mobile-optimised site. One option is not necessarily better than the other – just ask us which might suit your business better.

Responsive Design

Responsive web design automatically detects the screen size your visitor is using, and adjusts its design accordingly. In essence, it’s the one website – just scaled to suit. The desktop version contains all standard features and functions typically found on a full website, but the smaller-screen versions are simplified. Such lean design makes it easy for visitors to navigate on the go.

Responsive design is an efficient approach if you are developing a brand new website from scratch.

Mobile-Optimised Sites

Mobile-optimised sites are programmed to appear anytime a visitor accesses your site via a mobile device. It is similar to responsive design in that the smaller-screen versions only show core functions.

The key difference is that a mobile-optimised site is built completely separately. For this reason, developing a mobile-optimised site is good if you have a website that already exists.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Getting your website featured on the front page of Google is something that all businesses and organisations strive for. But it is not easy, and can depend on external factors, such as how many competitors you have.

Nonetheless, there are ways you can increase your web presence online. Optimising pages to rank for particular terms is a great place to start. If you want to rank for say ‘web design newtown’ then those words need to appear on your page, ideally in more than one place.

Let us talk you through the factors that make up Google’s ranking system – such as quality content and build – and how keywords and phrases help search engines determine how relevant your site is to a particular search.

Considerations for E-commerce Websites

The popularity of online shopping has meant that more e-commerce stores are popping up all over the place. Increased competition means that there is no room for error – online shopping sites must be as efficient and easy-to-use as possible.

If you are trying to sell products via the internet, your website could make or break a sale. Consider how you display images carefully. Ensure that items are easy to find, and your shopping cart works seamlessly. Think about how you might incorporate buyer reviews or sync your e-commerce site to popular platforms like Paypal or Facebook. These are considerations our team can explore with you in detail.

Benchmarking Performance via Analytics

The ability to measure your website’s performance offers extremely valuable insight. The data indicates areas for improvement by showing you:

Where your traffic is coming from

How much time people are spending on your site

How many pages people are visiting across your website

What the most popular content is on your site, or the most visited pages

What the navigation path is that people are taking to explore your site

Where people are exiting (i.e. where are they getting bored)

If You Build It can help you set up a Google Analytics account, regardless whether your website already exists or we build one for you.

Social Media

If you have active social media accounts, you should feature them on your website. It helps to increase the visibility of your brand across various channels, maximising reach and sales. To integrate your digital marketing tactics, simply add a clickable Facebook or Instagram icon to the footer of your website, or place a live Twitter feed on your homepage for visitors to see.

Usability and Website Structure

It’s important that the information on your website is arranged in a simple, commonsense way. Text-heavy, disorganised sites are difficult to follow and as a result, visitors lose interest.

To ensure your website is as easy-to-use as possible, figure out who you target market is and workshop how they might interact with your site. Designing your around your visitor’s needs is key.

Accessibilty Guidelines

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are rules and techniques that help the vision-impaired and disabled access web content via assistive technologies (such as screen readers).

Guidelines are split into different standards: A, AA and AAA. It is mandatory for all Federal government websites to comply with AA standards. While there is no strict legislation around compliance for business, you may still be liable for penalty under the Disability Discrimination Act.

What’s great about WCAG is that adhering to them improves usability for all visitors, regardless of ability.

Ongoing Updates and Maintenance via CMS

When building a website, you want to make sure it comes with a CMS (Content Management System) that is easy to use. This will enable you to update web content whenever you require. Without a CMS, you’ll be stuck asking your web developer to change things for you whenever you want to upload a photo, article, or correct a typo – and paying for this service can be costly.

IYBI’s web development team always provides you with this facility to make updates yourself. And we even train you how to do it, so you can feel confident about editing content on your own.

Our Most Recent Work

We’re only as good as our last effort so what better way to put our money where our mouth is than sharing a weekly updated feed of our most recent work?

Most agencies choose to share 5 or 10 of the best projects they’ve ever undertaken (usually the ones with the biggest budgets). We’re proud of how nimble and efficient we can be working within the constraints of any budget.