We consider the discovery phase in website design to be the most crucial part of our design process. Whether you need our help with your branding, your website design, WordPress development or your digital marketing efforts, our digital experts are fully aware of the importance of getting a holistic view of understanding your business, needs and goals. We are all about digging deeper than just beautiful designs; we ensure the final product is fit to achieve your business goals and reaching the right audience. At Underline, we take pride in bringing brands to life digitally.

The Role of the Discovery Phase

To achieve the right outcome from the project, we always consider the Discovery phase to be the most crucial part of our website design process. We use internal research, allowing our team to fully dive into your goals and internal expectations, target audience, key problems and pain points, existing solutions and areas for improvement.

The discovery process in any web design is to create a common understanding amongst everybody involved with the project. This not only clarifies your objectives, but it allows us to develop a website that meets your directives. We want to ensure we start all our web design projects with the right understanding and clear definition of what exactly needs to be achieved, as well as properly scope and plan all deliverables.

The Underline Way – Our Approach to the Discovery Process During Your Website Design Project

Here at Underline, we always ensure you are part of the process, from beginning to end. We are very approachable, all our projects are collaborative giving you plenty of opportunities for your feedback and to be heard.

Below are the steps that help us get the bigger picture along with all the nitty-gritty matters that might be useful for a successful new website design launch.

Kick-off Meeting

The initial meeting between us and your team allows us to capture all the information we need to start off the web design & development process. Be it you visit our studio, us coming to your offices or even via video conference (which surely has become a norm now) we will allocate adequate time to ensure we cover the main focal point of your goals and expectations.

Goals Review

Every website we design is with the sole purpose of meeting our client’s needs. We analyse the customer and business needs that the new website must address, as well as the functionalities required to achieve these. A the top-level your goal might be to sell products or services, take bookings or educate, but we do tend to dive a little deeper and identify metrics required to support the achievement of business objectives. These could be boosting engagements, building email subscribers, encouraging conversions, increasing monthly unique visitors, reducing bounce rates, promoting thought leadership, promoting products or seek media attention.

Competitor Review

We get an insight into your competitors to determine your brand positioning. This helps us to draw up a clear plan to make sure you stand out. Whether it is market penetration, diversification or product development, we try to understand the best approach to ensure your new website outperforms your ROI expectations.

Target Audience and User Journeys (User Persona Creation)

We determine who your main users are and how they use your website. It gives us deep insight into your audiences and their motivating factors which allows us to make sure their interactions with your website generates conversions. Here, we define a clear path for your user journey mapping out the pain factors and how to overturn them.

Hierarchy of Content & Information Architecture

Now that the user journey has been defined we look at what information should be placed in front of your audience. We determine the structure for all your contents and place them in a hierarchy to define the flow of information.

Functionality Requirements & Technical Discovery

Our experienced technical team will carry out research to understand the technical needs of the website to prepare for any curve-balls external factors might influence. We always plan ahead so having an overview of all functional specifications is crucial for us right from the start. Factors such as server infrastructure, third-party integration, APIs, database, security, load time and even legal implications are factored in to make sure whatever we build do have the scope to meet the stringiest requirements.

SEO Audit & Analytics Review

Technical SEO is an integral part of all our projects. As such, we evaluate your existing SEO strategy including analytics data and SERP rankings. Starting with the viewpoint of any issues that the business is facing, or opportunities the client wants to maximise, we use Google Analytics to study the current site performance. This allows us to make sure your ranking and conversions aren’t affected by the project and recommend areas of any improvement.

Sitemap Creation

Sitemap helps us sum up our discovery and is used as a foundation for every web design and development project. You may think of it as a ‘Table of Content’. The document produced here will summarise the agreed pages of your website, the hierarchy of the pages, the links between the pages and the information architecture that will define the overall structure of the website.

Deliverables & Timetable

A clear definition of project deliverables and a detailed work plan is prepared by our Project Manager and signed off by your team to ensure we both are on the same track.

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Why the Discovery Phase So Important in Web Design?

The Discovery phase is a crucial exercise that any web design agency should start the project with. Other than getting a clear picture of your wants and needs it better identifies project scope resulting in a more accurate estimate. Make design decisions based on data, not assumptions and helps ensure a higher return on investment. Below we’ve highlighted a few advantages of a discovery phase in any website design process:

Avoid Project Scope & Extra Cost

We’ve all heard the stories of costs arising during the website build process. The discovery phase eradicates any extra costs of additional features or changing the scope of a project once it is underway. It is possible that without a discovery process you will overlook a necessary function or feature of your website.

Data-Driven

Because we will be taking a holistic look at your current site’s performance, including architecture, current user experience, analytics and search engine optimisation, it will allow us to develop solutions based on these captured data for maximum impact. Your new website will not only be designed on a whim for visual pleasure but to drive engagement and improve conversions.

Defines a Clear Artistic and Functional Direction

Identifying brand considerations and the artistic approach the new website needs to follow early on will allow the designers and developers to be on the same page throughout the entire project lifecycle.

Using Your Findings

The most common mistake web design agencies make following a discovery session is not using the findings throughout the project. We are constantly referring back to the goals set out and regularly referring to the user journey map, sitemap, information architecture to ensure we are creating the best possible solution for our clients. A good discovery process is incredibly valuable in defining the project and ensuring success for both us and our clients.

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Interested in working with us? Call Underline on 02070789010.

We are an award-winning Digital Agency based in London & Manchester. At Underline, we specialise in Website Design, Web Development, Branding and Digital Marketing. We create stunning website designs in London and are highly regarded as a leading digital agency in London.