3 keys to successful web projects

When starting any web design project there are three important things that determine whether the project fails or succeeds.

Three most important things in any web project

A) Choosing who to hire
B) Picking the right goal
C) Picking the right platform to achieve that goal

Choosing who to hire

The most important decision is who to hire. Just like when you have a health problem, choosing a doctor who knows their stuff is the most important because they’ll be able to guide you through pretty much anything, and know who to consult if others are needed. A designer who doesn’t know what they’re doing will never succeed by accident. And a pro with deep understanding of all areas area including design, development, marketing, user experience and graphic design — will almost never fail.

Choosing the right goal(s)

You need to understand what’s the main objective of this project. Ask yourself, what would you like the visitor to do on your website? What would be the dream scenario?

With design, strategy, budget – every decision should be making that happen. Every pixel, every word, every image, animation, and link should be chosen with this goal in mind.

Hint: usually the goal is for a visitor to buy a product or a service. But it could be to get them to vote for you, join your cause or hire you.

Picking the right platform

A lot of freelancers and companies doing web design use the same platform in every project. This can make sense, if they only pick projects that are suited for that project, like a Shopify specialist only doing e-commerce, a Squarespace -freelancer only photography portfolios or a Webflow agency focusing on startup landing pages.

Too often they do every website with WordPress, even though something else might be more appropriate. The platform should always be chosen by a pro who knows the pros and cons of each platform, and understands the main goal of the project.

Example from last month

Last month I did a website for a lovely Canadian 24/7 bakery chain. For them, it was all about the making the scheduling and choosing the pickup location – as easy as possible. After a deep inspection the conclusion was that

• This could not be done in Squarespace. The Acuity Scheduling owned by Squarespace is an amazing product, and Squarespace ecommerce could work for something like this, but they can’t be used together very easily.

• Or Shopify. For most projects Shopify is currently the best e-commerce platform with tons of date picker apps, but as the checkout process is restricted and cannot be modified (except in Shopify Plus which is $2,000/month) the apps simply cannot provide a good user experience.

• Ecwid got close. It’s easy to embed inside Squarespace which my client was using, and it provided tons of things we needed.
  Datepicker in checkout – check.
  In store pickup and local delivery - check.
  Adjusting prep time for differen products – check.
  
  However, for this particular project after a deep comparison, Square Online was the winner.
  

• I found Square Online to have the best user experience for restaurants, bakeries, any store that has in store pickup, local delivery, and date picker for the order. Even with some annoying restrictions compared to other platforms, the ability to first choose pickup or delivery and the time, and only then start shopping is amazing. By using Square Online, we were able to save tens of compared to making something custom with WordPress for example. The sales have been spectacular.

Conclusion

A) Choose a goal that best aligns with your business goals.

B) Take an extra effort when choosing who to hire. Talk about your business problems and see if they have good ideas for solving them.

C) Make sure they don’t just use the platform they always do but pick one that’s right for you.

Need help with a website redesign, wanna know who to hire or which platform to use?

Don’t hesitate to get in touch. @hire

– Fenix