Your commercial website is more than a website brochure.
For many companies, it's the first place a prospect will look to determine your authenticity, learn about what you do, make an enquiry, reserve a time, request a quotation or grab the phone and call your team.
That means that the layout and function of the site is just as important as the website design.
This is why our commercial website ideas are not cookie cutter. We don't get to the same concept and design it the same way – we start with the business, who the website's for and what it needs to do.
A good, professional website should be able to answer just a few questions quickly.
What do you do?
Who for?
Why should they buy?
What do we want them to do?
Call, Fill, Book, Quote?
On the latter, it could be to call, WhatsApp, quote, book a time, or click on a page or service.
Our commercial website portfolio puts this in perspective with several concept options. We do not conform to one – each concept starts at the business, audience and needs of the website.
One of our examples in the portfolio is a concept for a clinic.
This is a good example of a service-based site where the client wants you to trust them. You want to know the services, find the right specialist or doctor, and book an appointment.
This begins with a trust first architecture where the consumer finds the right service and moves to book an appointment.
A website will need to include:
The features will vary with each type of business.
In the portfolio there is an example of a construction and an architecture business.
This requires a portfolio of jobs completed to convey the types of work they've done. Services may be less important without the same portfolio of construction.
This business starts with a portfolio to enable search, filters and themes. It can be combined with service pages that focus on sectors and processes. You may want other features that will be particular to this kind of business.
This structure allows a product or portfolio section to form part of the sales presentation without being separate to the other pages.
The third in the portfolio is for a local business.
This type of business will focus on maximum quote and call requests.
It relies on fast-moving, quick-to load site with landing pages built for each business process or sector and form built in for instant quote and call out. The website uses a call+whatsapp sticky bar.
You should see this type of website if you've seen that the business has a search history of people discovering them before sending a quote or making a call.
Navigation simplified with a clear move toward contact.
That's why our business website portfolio showcases the different layouts and ideas rather than one website layout for all.
A clinic has very different priorities to an architecture business or local service company.
A clinic has to prove trust, make booking and learning easy.
An architecture business has to demonstrate capability and range through a portfolio of projects.
A local business has to make visiting or asking for a quote quick and easy.
The output can be very different, but the principle remains unchanged.
Beginning a brief to website process far in advance of the visual design of a website involves understanding the business model, target market, and website purpose with a discovery call.
The purpose might be to get more sales, enquiries or to improve what the website communicates about the services.
From there, a website brief and sitemap create the proposed structure before visual website concepts are sketched.
This phase is important because it allows the business to imagine how things will work before the visual design gets underway.
The visual concepts then develop using the business brief and the brand.
For that reason, we call the portfolio pages approach to design as well as layout rather than a bunch of templates.
It isn't the case that a website needs to be complicated to be effective. A website needs to make sense for the business, support the hierarchy of information, and lead the website visitor easily from beginning to end.
Once a visual design approach is agreed on, the project moves into the build phase.
Depending on the work, this can include copywriting, responsive design, contact forms, WhatsApp click to chat, Google maps, and basic on page seo setup. Testing is part of the web build as well.
A website that looks good on one desktop screen isn't sufficient.
Visitors will access the website from many sizes of phones, browsers, and types of device, so cross device testing is carried out to iron out issues before the website goes live.
Every business website has additional practical needs over and above the core 5 to 6 pages.
The list by FNA Marketing Solution of common business website integrations includes:
The exact needs will vary from one business to another.
That is why the scope gets set and agreed on before starting to build a website rather than an identical scope being imposed from the beginning.
If the needs identified don't work within the budget, then the options available are discussed rather than costs and scope change suddenly.
The portfolio pages in the Business Websites portfolio are useful because they represent different types of customer journey that can be designed for a website without implying that every business needs the same journey.
1 business website might be based around appointments, another around browsing projects and browsing services, and yet another might be around calls and quote requests.
Which idea is most appropriate depends on what the customer needs.
If you'd like to see the website design approach more clearly, then this is what the process involves - structure design, scope writing, designing around the business, testing, and publishing.
The purpose of the website for business is straightforward.
Help the visitor learn about the business.
Build trust.
Discover what services they need.
Make the next step easily, confidently.
The three example websites in the Business Websites portfolio from FNA Marketing Solution demonstrate this in three different ways, a clinic appointment website, an architecture & construction website, and a local lead generation business website.
Every one of those ideas starts with a different customer journey, which ultimately makes the structure of the website look very different.
If you've been asking the right question for designing your website, then perhaps your next question should be, "What do I want my website visitors to do?" Then everything else may become easier.