When organizations come to Salted Stone (S2) for website design or redesign services, they often have a surface-level approach in mind.
Especially with redesigns, the goal is often simple: they want us to make their website look better and load faster, and maybe sprinkle in some updated language here and there. But from our perspective, this approach can lead to a successfully completed project that never drives meaningful changes to the outcomes associated with your website. It doesn’t improve the user experience of the site meaningfully to just update typography and colors; it’s just a new coat of paint on the same old house.
Let’s be honest here — any agency worth their salt (no pun intended) can create a functional website that looks nice. And if that’s truly all the situation calls for, then we’re happy to make it happen!
But whether you’re looking to begin a website redesign project or a completely new build, you have an invaluable opportunity to take a closer look at how you want your website to perform for your business. Why waste that opportunity by carrying old assumptions forward unexamined?
In this blog post, we’ll show you how our approach to website projects is different — and how an S2-designed website ultimately delivers more value than a new coat of paint ever could.
We prioritize strategy and outcomes.
In our experience, many organizations are unable to identify or articulate what they need their website to do, which makes it difficult — if not impossible — to create a website redesign strategy that will make it happen.
Your website’s core purpose(s) will depend on the intersection of your organization’s size, industry, product/service offerings, level of brand recognition, sales process, and more. For example, a relatively young company may primarily use their website to drive brand awareness via SEO-focused, ungated top-of-funnel content, whereas an established business with a high level of brand recognition may want to focus more on lead scoring via value-driven website form fills and behavioral analytics.
Embarking on a project without a strategic plan can result in a website that’s trying to do everything at once, or a website that does nothing but provide basic information.
That’s why we run a simple planning exercise, called website roadmapping, before diving into a new build or redesign. This process was developed by analyzing hundreds of completed web projects over the course of a decade to uncover the most important questions we need to ask and answer before we’ll know what to build.
Whether you already have a list of website goals or didn’t even know you needed one, we’re experts at drilling down and determining what your website should be able to do for your business.
Our websites solve complex problems (including ones you don't know about yet).
What’s the finished product at the end of a website project? For us, it’s not just the website itself — it’s the outcomes that website enables.
We can't afford to look at websites in a vacuum. Our team is constantly exploring ways to make websites do more for the business, optimize internal processes, and work together with your other systems. How can we leverage your CRM to create more dynamic website experiences? How can we adjust your contact forms to improve your lead scoring and automate the marketing-sales handoff? How can your site serve your organization, both in the short term and as you continue to scale?
From building complex product configurators to gathering insights about the buyer’s journey, we create websites that solve problems, driving value for our clients’ customers and internal teams. And if you’re thinking that your existing website has no problems, we’re sorry to say that it probably does — you might just need a good roadmapping workshop to uncover them.
We push back when we need to.
Some agencies do exactly what their clients request, to the letter, no matter what. While that may sound like a positive attribute on the surface, refusing to ask questions, point out things that don’t make sense, and provide better solutions is actually doing you a disservice — especially when it comes to building websites.
Because we take a strategic, context-aware approach to website projects, we’re good at recognizing when something doesn’t fit in with the big picture, and we’re not afraid to speak up. Additionally, our roadmapping process enables us to have those conversations early on to ensure the overall website design strategy truly aligns with your short- and long-term goals.
Let's build a website that does more for you.
Shall we bring back that house metaphor? If you want us to simply paint your house (do a straightforward website redesign), we’ll do an outstanding job. But we can also build you the dream home of websites — one that offers a great user experience, helps you optimize internal processes, and supports your business as you grow.
Ready to build a website that goes beyond the basics?
