My 9 year old daughter wants to start a company: Den Dog Scouts. She asked me to create a website in one day. When you started your company did you think the same thing?
Many startups have a friend or relative build a quick website. This is great to get something up quickly, but they often miss key brand-building steps that can help their brand succeed out of the gate.
Creating a beautiful, effective and on-brand website is a lot of work! It takes time to refine the language, perfect the layout and ensure there are no technical snags.
And, launching or redesigning a website should be done right. The last thing you want is for your brand new site to be lacking, feel off-brand, or fail in it’s functionality.
So what do you do when you want an exceptional website, and you’re pressed for time?
You create an “Essentials” site first.
An “Essentials” site, as we call it here at Bauerhaus, is a compelling, beautiful, fully on-brand and well thought-out website that acts as Phase One of your website launch or redesign.
It’s not a draft. It’s not the website your friend (or your mom) built for you in one day.
An “Essentials” site is a mini version of what will be your full-fledged website, presenting the essential components of your business — the benefit being, your design team can continue to build out your site with more details and functionality while visitors can still discover and fall in love with your brand.
Building an “Essentials” site for Modales Wines
After moving up their Opening Date, our client Modales Wines wanted to go live with their new site sooner than later.
So first, we fully completed their branding, choosing and crafting compelling imagery, design and copy. We then focused on the most essential elements of their website to create a pared-down version of what would later be their full-fledged site.
Modales was able to get their website up quickly without sacrificing the branding elements that make a lasting impact on customers: an established brand identity, a compelling story, beautiful imagery and language, and necessary details about their location, offerings and contact info.
Key components of an effective “Essentials” website
- Call-to-Action: Invite users to subscribe to your email list with a discount or other offering.
- Integration with Mailchimp or another email client
- Brand Strategy & Brand Story
- Logo design
- Custom design and development so your brand stands apart from your competitors
- Google Analytics & Google search console, so can measure your website traffic
- Custom Favicon
- SEO plugin installed, so you can measure your site’s search engine optimization
- Userway plugin too strengthen site accessibility
Your marketing suffers when your website is out-of-date, ineffective or lacking. Breaking the website launch or redesign process into two phases allows you to publish your site sooner without sacrificing important branding elements and user features.
With an “Essentials” site, you’re ready for Phase Two: an exceptional site.
Are you ready for your website to match the sophistication of your brand?
Want to launch a new product line, or set up your start-up for success out the gates?
Talk to our team about designing and developing a website as exceptional as your brand.