But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of web design and development, recent software innovations have made my life much easier – and here’s why.
Fewer people – faster results.
In the past, to develop a website that supports a simple awareness objective, I would need to work with a coder, UI and UX designer, a client brand guardian and then me, as the designer. That’s potentially 5 high-value professionals.
But now the beauty of the open source community is the freedom and flexibility they offer, all because of the huge strides taken by the likes of WordPress builders (Divi/Visual Composer), SquareSpace, Macaw etc. Their code is now leaner, so one simple benefit is that the pages load quicker, and this makes them a viable development platform for us across a variety of clients. This also drives new value, speed and output for our clients.
We can also easily support a complex digital strategy, including social media and conversion, all while leveraging the vast library of best practice now available to me.
Knowing your customers is easier.
Some things will never change. Knowing your customers or targets, and what their behaviours are, is a rule to live by.
Not to over-simplify this but, all I have to say is ‘Google Analytics’. We’ll discuss ‘revolution’ on this subject another day. Review your website regularly, a website should evolve over time and never remain static.
Nothing stands still, but that’s OK.
This new-found freedom also means that as the digital strategy evolves, we can evolve the experience for customers faster. These new platforms and their flexibility means that new themes and frameworks are easily updated and evolved for your overall customer experience.
These drastically improved frameworks are not only allowing the likes of a small start-up in Windsor to take advantage of the best UX, good iconography and best practice user-journeys, they’re helping the likes of Dunk Design working with multinationals.
So, we create a huge range of websites – from the simple with content-only pages, through to expansive eCommerce sites with complex functionality, visited by hundreds of thousands of people a week – all as a small team that is part of a hugely talented community of thousands. Power to design people!
