You can’t run before you walk, and you can’t walk before you crawl. We love this logic, which is why we’ve separated our website development process into three phases: crawl, walk, and run (CWR). This phased approach allows us to get our feet wet with your website and to ramp it up as your business grows.
So, what’s a crawl website?
A crawl website is the minimum required version of your website that establishes your digital presence.
For us, a crawl website achieves the same thing for every business, but varies in requirements. For instance, a small business may need a few pages ready while a large corporation may need hundreds of pages. Among other variables, the company size introduces different challenges and approaches to building a crawl website.
Because of these differences, we’ve identified key elements that go into a successful crawl website:
Designs That Are True to Your Brand
Your brand is the lifeblood of your business. It’s what customers recognize and interact with. In order for us to bring your brand to life for your crawl website, you’ll need to communicate the following to us:
- Your unique selling proposition
- The story behind you and your company
- The goal of your website and website
You’ll be forced to “disrobe” different aspects of your company that you may have never discussed before. Not everything needs to be discussed, but our goal is to have just enough information to understand your brand. Only then can we start to build beautiful and elegant branded designs for your website. Because websites should always have a purpose, we’ll design it for that purpose, whether that’s to sign up for a newsletter, submit a contact form, or something else entirely.
Build Only the Core Web Pages for Your Business
Your website must do one thing right and extremely well: communicate your core business to customers. The other non-core areas can still exist, but should take a backseat for later during the walk and run phases. In terms of the information architecture (think of all the web pages that exist on your website), your website should include a home page, services page, about us page, and contact us page. These pages must appear in the main navigation at the top of your website. When designed correctly, your customers can quickly explore your website, identify your core business offerings, understand what sets you apart from your competitors, and convert immediately.
Analytics Implemented Across Your Website
If you haven’t done so already, learn how to implement Google Analytics here. Analytics is not a set it and forget it type of mentality. In fact, we’ve noticed many businesses forgetting to do one of the following on their website:
- Implement analytics;
- Pull insights from analytics; and
- Take action on those insights.
If you’re not doing all three, then you’re doing analytics wrong. You need all three to actually make use of your website data because otherwise, your website is operating blindly without any guidance on whether changes are needed.
A perfect reason why you need analytics is to make a great first impression for customers. Remember, your website is likely the first thing from your company that customers interact with. Leveraging analytics will uncovering what’s working and what’s not working on your website. For instance, customers may have stopped interacting with parts of your website, spent a lot of time on certain pages, and stopped converting on certain pages. You can use this information to reinforce what’s already there or redesign any bad user experiences.
Conversion is Aligned with Your Business Objectives
Converting customers is usually the primary goal for any website and business. Therefore, it’s extremely important to orient your crawl website with your business objectives for conversion. You can assign any action on your website to track as a conversion. However, choosing which actions can be challenging and require a ton of thought – a form submission goal is radically different than a traffic goal. Both require different approaches and the resulting website will differ in design, content, and overall customer journey.
At Uplancer, we can help align your website and business conversion objectives to get the most out of your crawl website.
Your Digital Footprint is Established!
What you’re really doing in all of the above is establishing your digital footprint in the most effective way. You want people to easily find your website as well as interact with it. Search engines reward good websites by ranking them higher and customers appreciate finding a website that addresses their pain points. There’s a ton of legwork to get your website up and running for a crawl site, but remember, this is just the start! You still have the CWR walk phase and run phase to consider!
The Bottom Line / TLDR
A successful crawl website is simple, focuses on your core business, and offers essential web pages like home, services, about, and contact. It’s crucial for a crawl site to implement analytics for gathering insights that inform future improvements and ensuring that your site is engaging to users. Additionally, a crawl website must clearly align your conversion strategy with your business goals to improve your customer’s website experience and set future expectations. Connect with us today to get started with building your crawl website.
