Netwealth has just completed a six-month website redesign. It chose a different path to most, looking beyond industry borders for inspiration, and drawing on a range of service specialists to bring their expertise to the project. Here are some of the tips learnt from the project.

Creating the strategy

1. Look for outside inspiration.
   Netwealth approached the website with a focus on websites it liked and not limiting itself to its direct competitors, keeping the focus on what their users expected and needed.
   
   
2. Go mobile.
   A huge proportion of people will access your website via their mobile device. Do not leave the mobile user experience as an afterthought.  Even consider having a ‘mobile 1^st’ approach, where you design for the mobile 1^st and the desktop second.  Netwealth actually designed for three screens simultaneoiusly – desktop, tablet and mobile.
   
   
3. Take your team on the journey.
   Netwealth involved employees who worked with the different target audiences to test the website wearing that ‘hat’. This provided insights into the different audiences and their needs. They also ran an employee competition for the ‘Face of Netwealth’ to use in their corporate photos and videos that appeared on the the website.

Working with vendors

1. Provide a strong brief for your vendors.
   The brief should include a description of the project and what is in and out of scope. Things to include are: who is your target audience, what is the purpose of the website, what is your budget and what websites you like and aspire to be like.
   
   
2. Compare like with like.
   When comparing vendors, make sure you compare providers who offer similar services with similar price points, rather than comparing vendors with completely different price points. Otherwise you will not be comparing like with like.
   
   
3. Get your copywriters involved from the start.
   Copy is critical to get right, but remember the balance between images, copy and space. That said, as the owner of your business, you know your product features the best, so work closely with the copywriters don’t expect them to know your industry perfectly.
   
   
4. Avoid the print trap.
   Use a program such as Zeplin, to ‘translate’ the detail from programs such as Adobe Photoshop into the correct pixel information to avoid a disconnect between what the designer views (and expects) and what the IT developers code.
   
   
5. Keep communication channels open.
   Use an instant messaging project management tool such as Slack to keep the information flowing between the designers and the tech team. This allows them to ask questions and get responses quickly, without the bottleneck that sometimes an email inbox is.