So you have a brand new website.

While your image has been reinvented, you have taken great care to make only subtle changes to your site and you are fairly certain your audience will respond well to it. You have worked hard with your design team to ensure your new website is clear and concise. You have described your services in detail and you have dedicated a section of your site to your marvelous new content.

Before you launch your new website, it’s important to test its effectiveness.

You may be wondering, how do I test my website if it’s not online, making it measurable through analytics?

Utilizing a test group unfamiliar with your services to analyze your new site is one great way to ensure all necessary information is readily accessible.

Once you have finished working through your new site, it's important to make sure user experience is at its best. Understanding the modern digital landscape is extremely important.

Without addressing user accessibility, how you will be able to understand your audience’s usability?

Understanding Landscape

One of the most crucial items to understand about website landscape and its prospected future is the importance of mobile-first website design.

According to Hosting Facts’ 2016 mobile internet user statistics, ”52.7% of global internet users access the internet via mobile, and 75.1% of U.S. internet users access the internet via mobile.”

In addition, Hosting Facts has also shared the following notion, “Search engines are the starting point for mobile research, with an estimated 48% of mobile internet users starting their search on search engines.”

Ensuring your site is optimized for small screens is absolutely necessary in an age where information has become a coveted and constant digital commodity dominated by small screen access. Although, the short access process many online users practice may only give your website an average of eight seconds view time. This preference only further illustrates the importance of prioritizing optimization of your website for mobile-first design.

Understanding Trends

Trends are industry expectations of change and many times lead to innovations. It’s no secret they happen in all creative fields, with website development as no exception. In order for your entity to grow its website to full capacity and usability it’s extremely important for you to stay up to date on trends.

Your agenda may not align with each industry trend, but it’s important to stay informed on developments for your own growth.

Zazzle Media Company in the UK created a list of ten of the most important trends to be looking towards in the online realm. Below we have condensed their list for you.

1. More brands adopt a mobile approach
2. Wider implementation of responsive design
3. Widespread utilization of rapid prototyping tools
4. UI (user interface) patterns and framework
5. Focus on originality and the decline of stock imagery
6. Animations advance
7. Video becomes king
8. Courageous colors
9. More card and grid UIs
10. Innovative scrolling and parallax

Not all trends will align with your agenda, but it’s important to pinpoint the areas in which you want to improve and act upon them. Something that works for your website now may work even better with minor improvements.

Alongside having an understanding of the online landscape and trends, an important step in maximizing the reach of your website is understanding your competitors.

Understanding The Competition

Understanding the ways your competition is using their website is an important aspect in making yours the best it can be. If your competition is seeing results from monitoring a particular aspect or doing something new, it may be smart for you to consider implementing that into your website repertoire.

For additional information on maximizing the reach of your website and determining areas that need attention or further development, download our free eBook, The 9 Criteria for Brand Essence.