There can be no website design without a well-defined concept and there can be no concept without keeping any eye out for the objectives of the website. Everything’s connected and it’s only an objectivity driven concept that lays the foundation of a successful website. Nowhere is this fact more relevant, than in a website selling products or services, also known as an ecommerce website. From an online business’s point of view, it’s of paramount importance that the website is designed to promote business growth. Each and every design component must be used in such a way that it converts website visitors into customers.

For everybody who is thinking about opening an online business and wants a website for this purpose, it’s important to note that rather than focusing on the kind of web pages to be designed; importance must be given to the kind of results you want to achieve with the design of the web pages.

A concept driven website that is designed to pull in target customers and improve sales figures is a product of systematic planning, creativity, expertise and attention to detail.  If the website needs to be objectives oriented, it needs to be an outcome of a cyclic process.

Let’s have a look at that process.

Focused Ideation

You must have a set of ideas for your business, in terms of the products/services you want to sell, online promotional endeavors, website visitors’ engagement, sales objectives, and many more. It is your ideas that will help you give shape to your website, and ensure that the website’s design satisfies all the objectives that you have set for your online business. Idea generation doesn’t happen out of thin air. For the right ideation, you will need to develop an understanding of your target market, the needs and expectations of your target customers and the current trends that can have a bearing on your online business model.

By ensuring that you have an in-depth understanding of the needs of your target customers and your market competition you will be able to give shape to a concept that perfectly aligns with needs of your business.

Building the Web Design Project

Once you have a clearly developed set of ideas, you need to give them proper direction, and allow them to come together to form an effective concept. While this is being done, you are actually building your web design project. This is the stage where all the project brainstorming happens and website designers create a wireframe design for your website. This is also the time when you will fine tune your designing concept and will be able to get a bird’s eye view on what your concept will look like when it takes the form of a website.

Website Design

The designers now get into the act. They are ready with the wireframe that has been vetted by you, their client. So, all they now need to do is fill the wireframe with the design components that work best for your chosen concept. An experienced website designer will always keep scope open for making changes to the design at a later stage and not use a design process that makes for rigid designing that cannot be changed. A design of a successful online business website has to be flexible.

Quantitative Analysis

Before your online business website goes live, the design must undergo a thorough quantitative analysis. Yes, a qualitative analysis is also a must, but that is largely subjective. What is more important is measuring the design’s potential to achieve your business’s objectives. There are various parameters that you can take into consideration for this purpose. The call to action button, their placement on the web page, their ability to catch the attention of website visitors, the website’s navigability, the website’s products details pages and its shopping cycle are all parameters whose consideration will help you analyze your website in a quantitative manner. If you don’t like what you see, you can always make changes at this stage. It’s never too late to do so. Remember, you are looking at a website driven by a core concept. Your quantitative analysis must adhere to this concept.

Learn from feedback

Now that you have a website that has aligned itself with your concept, means you have a potentially successful online business website on your hands. You have covered all your bases, but there is one thing that you still need to do. You need to keep track of the choices made by your website visitors and get their feedback. This will help you make further improvements to the design, if any.

This will take you to the first stage of the process, which is focused ideation. As mentioned earlier, the process of developing a concept driven website is cyclic. A concept can never be rigid and its strength lies in its fluid nature. This helps you as an online business owner to make changes to it and adapt to ensure that it meets the needs and requirements of your prospective and existing customers.