Or perhaps you’re a DIYer and you decide Wix or SquareSpace or WordPress is the way to go. What most companies miss, however, is that a website project may be the single largest enterprise-wide effort it can undertake. Why? Because a website is the digital face of a company, the “virtual brand,” and to properly gain content and fairly represent each aspect of the business, almost every department will have to get involved. It’s why many businesses decide to partner with a web strategy agency. And many continue with the relationship to have the web strategy agency also do all the design, programming, and deployment.

When you have experience in website development like Innis Maggiore, you find it takes a small village to deploy a website: information architects, SEO specialists, copywriters, web graphic designers, digital marketers, video production teams, social media associates, developers, dev ops, and more.

It’s with this understanding that you can begin to comprehend the nature of a web project. And it becomes much easier to realize you need a good web strategy agency. One who can gather the goals and objectives from your company and properly translate them into a web strategy. One who can work with the C-suite, middle management, production staff, operations, IT, HR, and accounting to marry the aspirations from each into a cohesive and effective website. And one who can make it seem effortless, all while calming the stormy seas of your project anxiety.

To begin, here are some key items we start with to make a web strategy successful:

1. Clearly defined goals: A good web strategy will have clear, specific goals that align with your business objectives. This could include increasing website traffic, generating leads, improving engagement, or boosting online sales.
   
   
2. Thorough understanding of your audience: A successful web strategy requires a thorough understanding of your target audience, including their needs, preferences, and behaviors. This can help you create a user-centric website that delivers a positive user experience (UX). Because Innis Maggiore is all about positioning, “Customer” is one of the 4-C filters we use when we first engage.
   
   
3. Proper information architecture: Just like you wouldn’t build a building without a blueprint, you should never build a website without wireframes or a prototype. While they’re not much to look at, a good prototype fleshes out the navigation, the page hierarchy, the required content, and so much more. Plus, this simple step allows you to click around your “site” without investing in thousands of dollars in design and programming only to realize it’s not what you thought. Our information architects do rapid prototyping so we can validate it with you, our client, and any other stakeholders or customers with whom you’d like to collaborate.
   
   
4. Comprehensive content plan: This item is almost always overlooked. While it seems obvious, a comprehensive content plan that includes a variety of content types, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media posts is critical to map out PRIOR to beginning the design or programming of a web property.
   
   
5. Complete Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is an essential element of a web strategy. By optimizing your website for search engines, you can improve your visibility and attract more traffic. Innis Maggiore builds this into every web project. It is a nonnegotiable because sculpting a website or other property for SEO is actually the best way to build a website. We wouldn’t and can’t do it any other way.
   
   
6. Effective design approach: An effective design might mean user-friendly in most spaces, but we prefer to refer to it as an effective design because it’s critical to properly dramatize your brand difference. A user-friendly design means a user can get around your site easily. But an effective design means a user-friendly design plus the proper execution of your brand in digital format. Of course the website should be easy to navigate, visually appealing, and optimized for mobile devices, but it has to go beyond that. Your web presence is the most immediate and accessible tool in your arsenal of brand assets. Innis Maggiore ensures we’re dramatizing your position effectively rather than slapping graphics into a website.
   
   
7. Exhaustive interactive and integration schedule: We want your web presence to be more than brochure-ware. Innis Maggiore’s goal is to not only dramatize your brand difference in word, picture, and sound, but also in functionality. If your position is “the easiest to use in the marketplace,” then your online properties should be just as easy to use. In fact, they should help create a frictionless experience for your customers and prospects. To that end, we take the approach that there are web tips and tricks we can employ that provide a better UX and therefore, a better brand experience.