Your website says more about you than you think. On the surface, your website should tell your brand’s story and communicate your values (whether you mean to or not), your mission, and your unique selling points. Dig a little deeper, and your website will spill the tea: the compromises you’ve made, the “get leads quick” schemes you’ve paid for, your design and development capabilities or lack thereof, your commitment to security, and yes the quality of the product you sell too.
Vitally more critical than all, your website will tell me (the customer) how you (the business) value my interests. Are you selling or exposing my data with all of those tracking scripts? Are you likely to spam my inbox forever? Are you putting my needs above those growth-hungry managerial types intent on engagement hacking the website to improve some esoteric user metrics?
When it comes to website design, great products and leading brands are not just getting it right; they’re setting the standard. The rest are in a race to conformity, doing enough to check the box in next month’s board meeting. A room of also-rans scratching their heads at why customer acquisition is down. But here’s the inspiring part: With the right approach to design, your brand can stand out, too, and not just blend in with the crowd.
There’s a load of B2B marketing buzzwords thrown about, like thought leader, personalization, customer journey, growth hacking, account-based, etc. I’ll spare you the list; check out your pay-to-play Forrester Report for an exhaustive list. There is a place in brand and web design for all these buzzy concepts. They are abstractions that help simplify complex systems, ideas, or concepts. Namely, how to deliver joy and expertise to the people who take the time to visit, read, and explore your website. However, it isn’t enough to simply say these things aloud (or bold the font in a slide deck) for these marketing concepts to materialize like some incantation—Abracadabra, manifest thy form! It takes a culture, discipline, and practice to work with the underlying design principles to build something great.
Building long-lasting relationships with design stewards who become part of the fabric of your company (inside and out) and who risk asking the questions that need asking, often uncomfortably so, is the first step in building a great design practice for brands, products and websites.
If you build it…
Okay, so you want a better website. A website that is more than a brand billboard. You want to build a website that puts your brand, products, and services in their best light, drives engagement, and generates revenue. Whether it’s commercial or informational intent, you want people to remember your name, know what you think, what problems you solve, and buy what you’re selling. In short, believe in you. The key to solving this Gordian knot of content, intent, sales, and information sharing is to empower your design lead to say no.
You entrust an immense amount of power to your designers. The power to choose. To make brand rules and have the freedom to break those rules. Designers have the privilege of inventing and reinventing your brand. They present your products to the world and train the world how to think about you, your products, and your brand. While there is rigor and process in developing proper design thinking and vocabulary, it is ultimately the designer’s job to make the million little decisions on your behalf. Even when you see comps and get to pick between A, B, or C, ultimately, you see only the options the designer lets you see.
When this power is diluted through committee, the design suffers a regression to the mean. When committees make design decisions, the design lead is eclipsed by the strengthened buy-in from the various committee members, regardless of the quality of the decision. For an impactful, cohesive, and startlingly unique design outcome, the design lead must have veto power: empower them and listen when they say no.