You can’t run before you walk, and you can’t walk before you crawl. We love this logic and use it extensively when building websites We do so by separating our website development process into three phases: crawl, walk, and run (CWR). This phased approach allows us to ramp up your website as your business needs grow.
So, what’s a crawl website?
A crawl website is the minimum Required version of your website that establishes Your digital presence.
In general, a crawl website achieves the same thing for every business and varies greatly in requirements. For instance, a small business may need a few pages ready while a large corporation may need hundreds of pages. The company size alone introduces different challenges and approaches 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. That’s why care must be taken when designing anything that supports your website storytelling. When building your crawl website, you’ll need to communicate your unique selling proposition, the story behind you and your company, and the goal of your website. You’ll be forced to “disrobe” different aspects of your company to our team that you probably haven’t thought about. Only then can we transform our discussions into beautiful and elegant designs that guide your customers toward an action, whether that’s to sign up for a newsletter, submit a contact form, or something else.
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 content can still exist but should take a backseat for the later walk and run phases. In terms of the information architecture (think of all the web pages that exist on your website), it should consist of a home page, services page, about us page, and contact us page. These pages must be listed 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, and understand what sets you apart from your competitors.
Analytics Implemented Across Your Website
Many businesses forget to do three things for their website: 1) implement analytics; 2) pull insights from the collected data; and 2) take action on those insights. Some of these same businesses even believe that their website serves no real purpose! Remember, your website is usually the first thing that customers interact with in your company. That’s why it’s important to make a great first impression.
Leveraging analytics can help you do so by uncovering what’s working and what’s not working on your website. For example, customers may have stopped interacting with parts of your website, spent a lot of time on certain pages, and stopped converting on certain pages. Whatever the reasons may be, understanding them will help develop a strategy to improve your first impressions and capitalize on them. Without analytics, you’re operating blindly without guidance on whether you need to make changes to your website.
Conversion Orientation and Strategy Aligned with Business
Conversion is an indicator of success and is why orienting with your business objectives is important. You can assign any action on your website to track as a conversion. However, choosing which actions and how to tag them can be challenging and require a ton of thought. A form submission strategy is radically different than a traffic strategy. Both require different approaches and the resulting website will differ in design, content, and customer journey. Therefore, the right conversion must align with your organizational goal, which ultimately, shapes your digital efforts.
Your Digital Footprint is Established!
What you’re really doing in all of the above is establishing an effective digital footprint. 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 just remember, a crawl website is just the beginning of CWR with more to come in the later phases!
The Bottom Line / TLDR
A successful crawl website focuses on your core business and offers essential web pages like home, services, about, and contact. It’s crucial to also implement analytics for gatherings insights that inform future improvements, ensuring that your site effectively engages users. Additionally, aligning a clear conversion strategy with your business goals will improve your customer’s website experience and set expectations.
Connect with us to get started on building your crawl website to solidify your digital footprint. Set the stage today with your crawl website and for the future with your walk and run website.
