If you’re a business or nonprofit engaging in a website redesign, you’ve probably prioritized a list of specific things you’d like addressed–from a dated design that’s gotten embarrassing to making it easier for people to find things, or a content management system that actually works for you, not against you.
You’ve created an RFP outlining your needs: Business Development has its set of must-haves, the folks in Marketing have their wish list, and Program Directors have theirs. While needs like these are important, they are often viewed tactically, but are actually symptomatic of broader strategic problems. Effectively tackling them requires an approach rooted in more than a good website design process, by taking a brand-centric approach to problem-solving.
The field of User Experience Design (UX) has come a long way in the last decade, formalizing a process that helps clients, designers, writers, and developers balance business goals with audience needs to create more useful and usable websites. Too often, however, clients engaging in a website redesign are led by web design firms through a process geared mostly towards meeting website-specific goals. The result may be a great-looking and incredibly well-functioning website, but one that falls flat when it comes to meeting the broader strategic imperatives that are at the heart of owning an effective brand.
UX often focuses on answering questions similar to brand strategy to better understand audiences and the business. However, they are two distinct disciplines with different methodologies and objectives. UX is primarily focused on taking a rigorous approach to executing a successful online project—a project that serves critical business goals, but a project nonetheless. What UX does very well is help clients and designers better understand website users, then successfully address the needs they’ve identified (and likely discover a few they didn’t know they had).
But websites are just one (incredibly important) part of how brands engage with their audiences. Brand Strategy provides the necessary framework for applying critical thinking and problem-solving, by focusing on intrinsic brand value, relying on insights from things like SWOT and PEST analysis to align design thinking with business strategy. Even if clients don’t have the budget (or stomach) for a formal branding engagement, approaching the website design process from a brand-centric perspective creates better results by providing a broader, more far-reaching view of where a company is (and where it’s going), so that clients and web design teams are hunting in the right places as they design websites.
For design teams, brand strategy helps us ask more meaningful questions and provide ideas and explanations in the language of business, rather than the subjective (and often confusing to clients) realm of design. For clients, it orients the (also often confusing) web design process around more familiar business goals, focusing your people on what’s really important, placing choices in context, and clarifying decision-making. And for everyone, it strengthens the working relationship by helping us pull in the same direction–working within a more meaningful business strategy to effectively differentiate the brand and be more meaningful to audiences.
The most successful nonprofits and businesses are those that understand that every communications initiative, from logo design to online experiences, is part of an interconnected branding effort. By designing our websites with this in mind, we move together from problem-solving exclusively in the realm of web design to designing websites that are built to last, meeting the fundamental needs of executing an effective brand and business strategy.
