Web Design Strategy Part 1: Strategic Design
Define success
When your client doesn’t know what they need, they certainly won’t know what they want.
Every project should have a clear objective. If it doesn’t, you may as well be designing blindfolded. You can set your client—and yourself—up for success by helping them focus on what they need.
The value of a goal
To succeed, we start with a goal. Goals give you and your client something tangible to work towards. They create consensus at the outset of a project. When you and your client are comparing different solutions, the goal acts as a compass. It turns art into science by letting you measure a design’s effectiveness.
Here are two straightforward questions to get the conversation flowing.
1. What are your marketing goals?
Perhaps your client came to you to help launch a new product. Their challenges will be different than someone who wants to generate leads and acquire new customers. Different clients will have different goals.
Your client may have trouble articulating their situation, or they may have several competing needs. Encourage them to prioritize what’s most important, then build on top of that. A strong foundation is better for their business than a series of patches or a coat of paint.
Once you and your client have identified their primary goals, you’ve established a baseline to measure the effectiveness of your work.
2. Why do you think you aren’t meeting your goals yet?
This question can introduce you to some of the challenges the brand is facing and your client’s point of view. The backstory will give you a broader understanding of where the brand fits in the market.
It will also help you gauge how close they are with their customers and give you a few places to start. But this is just the first step.
Scaffolding and sequencing
Great design—and trust in great design—doesn’t just materialize. It comes from a common understanding of the problem and the solution. And that’s no small feat. You and your client live in two different worlds.
Scaffolding and sequencing are two tools you can use to help you solve your client’s problems and get their buy-in.
Scaffolding
A skyscraper doesn’t just materialize. It’s built on a foundation, from the inside out. Similarly, great design doesn’t just happen. It requires prep work and a vantage point that allows you to see the client’s situation clearly.
Scaffolding is how you and your client frame your findings. In essence, it’s everything you do upfront that simplifies the build. In strategic design, this includes brand and user research and building rapport with your client. All of this work sets the stage for the actual design.
Sequencing
Sequencing is related to scaffolding in the sense that all of this upfront work prepares your client for your design solution. To continue the skyscraper analogy, a construction crew doesn't just wing it. The skyscraper comes after the client buys the architect's vision.
Sequencing is about organizing your process. It builds on findings to help your client understand the solutions you present, and ultimately select an effective one.
If you jump straight into execution, your client may not know why you made certain choices. They need to see how your work comes from your research into their brand and their customers. Sequencing helps you achieve this.
For illustrative purposes, we’ll pretend that Skyroad, an imaginary commercial real estate company, is the client as we explore how scaffolding and sequencing play into research and design.
Getting to know the brand
Skyroad is roadblocked by legislation that prevents them from retrofitting their properties with green architectural elements. Their goal is for people to contact their city council to overturn these restrictions.
Brand principles
Before creating anything for a client, it’s important to know who they are. To this end, explore their brand principles. Most brands have a few guiding values that convey their identity. These may be written in a brand book, or they may be inside the founder’s head. In any case, a baseline understanding of who they are can greatly simplify your decision-making process.
For instance, the principles that guide Skyroad are: Active, Invested, and Self-driven. As a result, an educational campaign makes sense for their brand. The work for them will be for a niche, engaged community. It will likely have a strong tie-in with email and other social channels.
You would want to choose a template that accommodates blog content and white papers. You may also encourage them to share content through social channels and email campaigns. On all Squarespace sites, these integrations are as simple as a few clicks.
Existing collateral
Once you know the brand essence, see how these principles play out in the market. Get as many pieces of collateral as possible and immerse yourself in their brand. Audit their tweets, social presence, and how their website has evolved over time. Subscribe to their newsletter, and see if you can get old editions.
This process will educate you about the brand and the work your clients have bought into. It will also show your client’s that you’re interested in them, which helps you gain their trust. If any collateral seems inconsistent with their brand principles, take note and ask your client.
In the case of Skyroad, you find that they’ve produced a lot of content over the years. Even so, they haven’t plugged it into the right channels.
Stakeholder interviews
Once you have a sense of how they think about their brand, it’s time to talk with the people who bring these ideas to life. This is a good time to feel out your client’s priorities and tastes. Get clarity on anything interesting or ambiguous that you’ve found through research. Talk to them more in-depth about their goals. If you have any initial ideas, casually float them. When you talk about the different ways to share the content they produce, the client will light up.
Know the target
A brand is the sum of its people, products, and customer interactions.
Even if the brand’s guiding principles are intact, and your client is the perfect advocate for them, there may be an understanding gap. There are many ways to spot these holes and find ways to fill them in.
User research
Find out who the customers are and dig in. Many companies have a wealth of research on their target market. Investigate the data you have and combine it with qualitative methods. Talk to real and potential customers, and talk to the company’s marketers and sales reps.
After this step in the process, you find that what matters most to Skyroad’s customers is community. They’re actively engaged with the issues of today. They’re looking for others to share their enthusiasm. They thrive on momentum.
Personas
When clients are constantly dealing with business realities, it’s easy to lose track of the humanity behind every data point. Customer personas can remind them of it. Many brands have existing personas. Others may want personas sketched out. This is a good way to synthesize user research and make it more usable.
Take Jack, a persona for Skyroad. Jack studied civil engineering and business. He found himself in commercial real estate. While some of his friends think he’s a sellout, he believes that business can change the world for the better. He runs 5ks a few times a year. He’s always on the lookout for others who share his passion for sustainable change.
Design
This process helped you and your client lay the foundation for great design. Brand and user research helped you eliminate ideas that won’t work or don’t make sense, so you can focus on ideas that matter. Each step helped you generate, validate, or disprove ideas you may have had. Going through this with your client prepares them for the solutions you’ll present.
But before that, it’s time to face the blank screen and put your findings to work. Everything you know about Skyroad and their audience suggests that the brand needs a design refresh, a channel to explore the policy of sustainable architecture, and community engagement to fuel outreach and action.
You may find it’s easier to make a case for your design choices because you’ve partnered with your client to define objectives, brand, and challenges.
Iterate
After you’ve sold and designed your solution, you get to test your hypotheses. See if the design helps the business reach its objectives. If it doesn’t, optimize.
Strategic design begins with a purpose. It covers brand identity, UX, and the creative process. While a strategic approach may involve more work upfront, it can save you from rounds of opinion-based revisions. Ultimately, your strategic process is another design tool that leads to better results for you and your clients.
Want more?
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