How To Plan A Unique Website That Will Stand-out

Discover tips for a standout website with unique design, engaging content, and SEO to drive traffic and conversions. Building an authentic online presence.

Define Your Website’s Purpose

The first step in planning a unique website is to clearly identify your target audience and determine what value and solutions your site will provide for them. Consider who will be visiting your website and what needs or problems they have that your site can address.

You’ll also want to determine the main goals of the website. Is the purpose lead generation, ecommerce sales, providing a content hub, building your brand, or something else? Having a defined website goal will shape many aspects of your site, from design to content strategy.

Once you know your audience and goals, craft a mission statement that summarizes the purpose and value proposition of your site. A clear mission statement acts as an ongoing guide for your website and keeps you focused on achieving your goals. For example, a mission statement could be “Our website provides small business owners with practical advice and tools to start and grow their business.” Refer back to your mission statement as you make decisions about your website’s strategy and features.

Research Competitors and Industry Trends

Before you start designing your website, take time to research competitors and industry trends. This will give you valuable insights and inspiration for creating a unique site.

According Jakob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman Group, The average difference in measured usability between competing websites is 68%. This is smaller than expected, but makes sense given the dynamics of design within individual industries.

Analyze successful sites in your niche for ideas and inspiration. Look at their designs, content, features, and functionality. What are they doing well that you could emulate? Make a list of strengths to potentially incorporate.

Also look for weaknesses and gaps that your site could improve upon. Are there pain points or needs not being adequately addressed? Is the user experience lacking in certain areas? Identify opportunities to differentiate and stand out.

Cosima Mielke from Smashing Magazine stated that To learn more about the current state of user research and uncover the trends that will shape the user research landscape in 2024 and beyond, Maze surveyed over 1,200 product professionals between December 2023 and January 2024.

Research industry trends and innovations. Look for new technologies, capabilities, and design elements that are gaining popularity. Staying on top of trends will help you create a modern, forward-thinking website.

Conduct user research to gain first-hand insights into challenges and desires. Surveys, interviews, and focus groups with your target audience will reveal useful information to guide your strategy.

Analyzing the competition and understanding industry developments will help you make strategic decisions in planning a unique website that rises above rather than blends in. Capitalize on gaps in the market and leverage the latest trends to create something distinctive.

Choose a Memorable Domain Name

Your domain name is one of the first impressions people will have of your brand, so it’s important to choose wisely. Start by brainstorming keywords and phrases related to your brand, offerings, and target audience. Ensure the domain name you want is available as a .com and other popular extensions like .net and .org.

An information from WPbegginer stated. Keywords play an important role in a domain. Using keywords in your domain name tells the search engines what your WordPress website is about.

Keep the name short, simple, and easy to remember. Avoid obscure words or made up names that are difficult to spell. Use hyphens sparingly.

The domain should clearly communicate what you do and match your brand. For example, if you run a flower shop called “Blooms”, domains like BloomsFlowers.com or Blooms.com would be ideal.

Prioritize the .com version if available, as this is the most commonly expected extension. But also register close variations like .net and .org to strengthen your brand identity across the web.

Once you’ve selected a domain, perform searches to ensure no other brands have a similar name which could cause confusion. Also check that the name won’t have negative connotations or hidden meanings in other languages.

With some thoughtful brainstorming and research, you can choose a domain name that uniquely represents your brand while being catchy and memorable for site visitors.

Develop a Unique Visual Design

A website’s visual design should reflect your brand identity while being easy for users to navigate. Carefully choose colors, fonts, and imagery that align with your brand personality and industry.

When selecting colors, limit your palette to 2-3 core brand colors. Too many colors can look cluttered. Opt for hues that evoke the emotions you want site visitors to feel. Cool tones like blues and greens promote trust and security, while warm reds and oranges convey energy and excitement.

Fonts also contribute to your brand image. Sans-serif fonts feel clean and modern, while serif fonts have a more traditional vibe. Choose font styles that match your brand personality and are easy to read at various sizes.

Images and graphics allow you to tell a visual story. Use photos and illustrations that connect with your target audience and reinforce what your brand stands for. Ensure images are high-resolution and thematically consistent. Use graphic design software to create custom visuals and graphics that enhance your website’s visual appeal. Like Adobe Creative Cloud or Canva

With these branding elements in place, focus on layout and usability. Use plenty of white space so the design isn’t crowded. Make sure text and buttons are large enough to read and click on. Organize content logically and make key pages easy to find. A visually stunning website needs to put user experience first to effectively attract and engage visitors.

Prioritize User Experience

A website’s success depends on providing an excellent user experience. Visitors want to easily find information and accomplish goals. Prioritizing UX leads to higher engagement and conversions.

Use a mobile-friendly responsive design so the site works seamlessly on all devices. Optimize page load speeds. Include intuitive navigation like mega menus and breadcrumbs. Structure content clearly with headings, lists, and white space.

Ensure easy discoverability with site search and effective internal linking. Craft user flows that map to visitor goals. Remove friction points that hinder tasks. Include clear calls-to-action for conversions.

Conduct usability testing to uncover issues. Track metrics like bounce rates to improve pages. Listen to user feedback and make ongoing enhancements. Satisfied visitors who enjoy their site experience are more likely to return and convert.

Create Engaging Content

Creating engaging content should be a top priority when planning your website. The content is what will keep visitors coming back and get them to share your site with others. Here are some tips:

• Offer helpful and original articles, videos, guides and other content formats tailored to your audience. Don’t just copy existing content, provide unique value. Write about topics your audience cares about in an educational and entertaining way.
• Optimize your content for SEO by using relevant keywords and metadata. Do keyword research to determine topics and terms people search for related to your industry. Include these naturally in your content.
• Refresh your content regularly with new blog posts, videos, etc. Outdated content will not engage visitors or rank well in search engines. Set a content creation schedule and promote new content through email, social media and on your site.
• Experiment with different content formats like longform articles, short tips, quizzes, polls, checklists and more. Use variety to keep visitors engaged.
• Encourage user generated content like comments, reviews and shares. This content helps build community and gets visitors participating.
• Make sure your content is well-written and designed for skimmability. Break up text with headers, bullet points and images.
• Promote your content on social channels and link to it internally to maximize its impact. Quality original content will help your website stand out.

Integrate Interactivity

Interactivity is key for engaging users and encouraging them to spend more time on your site. There are several ways to make your website more interactive:

Add features like polls, quizzes, and assessments

Adding polls, quizzes, calculators, and other interactive elements can be a great way to engage visitors. For example, you could have a “What type of website user are you?” quiz on your homepage. Or if you run a health and fitness site, you could have users take a body mass index (BMI) calculator. These types of interactive features encourage visitors to spend more time on your pages.

Implement social sharing buttons

Enabling visitors to easily share your content on social media is another way to boost interactivity. Add social sharing buttons for sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. When visitors share your content, it helps increase your reach and traffic. Make sure the sharing buttons are prominently displayed on blog posts, product pages, and other locations you want to encourage shares.

Include commenting on posts

Allowing readers to comment on your blog posts and other content is a simple way to engage them. You can use a third-party commenting system like Disqus or build in native commenting on your site. Commenting fosters community and discussion around your content. Moderating and replying to comments also shows you value reader contributions.

Promote and Monitor the Site

Promoting your new website and monitoring its performance are crucial to driving traffic and getting results. Here are some key strategies:

Leverage SEO, social media, email marketing to drive traffic

• Research relevant keywords and optimize pages and content for SEO. This will help you rank higher in search engines.
• Create social media accounts and build an audience. Share your content and engage with users. Paid ads can expand your reach.
• Build an email list to send updates, offers, and other valuable content. Email subscribers are highly engaged users.

Use analytics to track conversions and optimize further

• Install Google Analytics or similar to monitor traffic sources, user behavior, conversions, and other metrics.
• Analyze the data to see what content and channels are performing best. Double down on what works.
• Identify underperforming areas and make changes – update content, fix technical issues causing drops offs, etc.

Develop a promotion strategy for new content

• Whenever you publish new content, promote it across your marketing channels.
• Create teasers and announcements to build anticipation. Send email alerts to subscribers.
• Promote new pieces multiple times on social media and repurpose the content into different formats.
• Consider paid ads to get new content in front of new audiences and accelerate sharing and engagement.

Establish a Content Creation Process

To keep your website’s content fresh and engaging over time, you need to establish an ongoing content creation process. This involves setting a schedule for regular content updates, creating templates and guidelines, and assigning roles.

Schedule Ongoing Content Updates and Refreshes

Decide how frequently you want to publish new content – whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. Consider creating an editorial calendar to map out themes, topics and publishing dates in advance. You may want to refresh and update existing content on a regular basis as well.

Develop Editorial Guidelines and Templates

Create editorial guidelines that cover your website’s voice, tone, messaging, and rules for attribution. Develop templates for different content types like blog posts, articles, videos, and more to streamline the creation process.

Assign Roles for Content Creation, Editing, Approval

Determine who will be responsible for creating initial drafts of content, who will edit and finalize the content, and who has final sign-off on publishing. Consider bringing on dedicated writers or developing a contributor network. Leverage team members’ strengths across writing, editing, subject expertise and more.

By developing a structured process upfront, you can continually publish valuable new content that aligns with your website’s goals and keeps visitors engaged over time.

Plan for Future Growth

When planning a unique website, it’s important to consider long-term growth and avoid getting locked into a platform that limits expansion. Here are some tips:

• Build on a scalable platform that allows adding new features and functionality over time. Opt for open source solutions like WordPress that have a huge developer community rather than restrictive proprietary systems.
• Budget for upgrades and new features. As the site grows, increased traffic and revenues can fund adding capabilities like ecommerce, user logins, forums, etc. Build growth milestones into your business plan.
• Set concrete goals for increasing traffic and revenue. Develop a marketing strategy to steadily grow visitors and sales. Track analytics to identify opportunities.
• Allow room to scale hosting needs. Consider a cloud hosting provider that seamlessly handles traffic spikes and storage needs.
• Keep branding and design flexible. Ensure your visual identity and style can adapt as new sections or site architecture are added.
• Expand your team. Hire staff or contractors to help with development, content creation, community management, etc.
• Listen to user feedback and make improvements. User testing and surveys can reveal pain points and new feature ideas.
• Stay on top of web design trends and innovations. Keep your site feeling current by tweaking the design every 2-3 years.

Planning ahead for scalability and growth will ensure your unique website can successfully evolve over time and avoid the need for a major rebuild down the road.

Conclusion

Creating a unique website involves several key steps that are essential for success. By clearly defining your website’s purpose, researching competitors and industry trends, choosing a memorable domain name, developing a unique visual design, prioritizing user experience, creating engaging content, integrating interactivity, promoting and monitoring the site, establishing a content creation process, and planning for future growth, you can ensure that your website stands out from the competition and continues to evolve over time.

Each of these elements plays a crucial role in crafting a website that effectively engages visitors, fulfills their needs, and achieves your business goals. By following these guidelines and remaining adaptable to changes in the digital landscape, you can create a website that leaves a lasting impression on your audience.