How to create a website for a startup and what is digital strategy?

Digital strategy is how brand value is conveyed in various digital channels. This implies that you have a brand, a message, a value, a message that you want to convey to your audience, and that’s exactly the way in which channels, in what you do in the digital environment and in combination with your digital strategy.

If we talk about channels, they are their own — those channels that the company owns and owns the information that is placed in them. First of all, this is a company website, social networks, a blog, and then, in essence, you are limited only by your own imagination, what else can you add to this pool and thus interact with your audience through these channels and how to broadcast your value, your brand, your message how to contact with the audience

And the second part of the channels where you can broadcast this value — acquired: banner advertising, contextual advertising and so on.

In most cases, we start working with our own channels and then gradually develop together with our customers and are already entering other channels.

If you are just starting, the main advice is not to save resources on naming and logo design. The most common mistake is to make a logo by friends, siblings, husband-wife. As a result, the logo is not related to the value that your company carries. But this is your flag, you put it in the middle of the deck and try to control the ship.

Contact those who do this professionally. Immediately develop a logo that conveys your values. It will set you apart from the competition and talk about what you do. This is a lot of nuances. For example, if you are doing something innovative, the serif font won’t suit you — it refers to the old, traditional one.

At first glance it may seem that it does not matter. But then, when you start working with digital channels, all these little things come up. It turns out that the logo that you planned and placed on a billboard can not be put even on Facebook avatar. Recognition suffers, you start to invent something, the brand is eventually eroded.

There should not be a bias towards the visual. Placing a beautiful logo on an unprepared prototype is not entirely correct, we need a balance.

Whose forces do all this? The most successful option is to immediately work with the designer and make an individual design. At first glance, it’s more expensive, but you don’t have to redo anything. Save at the beginning — spend on rework.

A good designer starts working on a logo and corporate identity with the right questions: who is your target audience? Where will she find you? How do you want her to perceive you?

Perhaps a compromise solution: there are services that will automatically make you a logo based on the entered data. You indicate in which field you are working, what exactly you are doing and in what color range you want to see the logo. Virtual AI-designer instantly forms for you a set of characters.

Examples of such services: LogoJoy, LogoMaster.

The first trend is minimalism, cleanliness and flat design. A design in which there are no shadows and transitions that makes life as easy as possible for users will be in trend for a very long time.

The second is bright colors. Look at the pages and logos of Belarusian startups: bright lime, purple, pink, acid shades. At first there was a monochrome fashion, and now this brightness.

The third is natural forms. There used to be a block resources mod, but now there are flowing lines on many sites. The page can be made on an unevenly shaped substrate — for example, in the form of a blot. This is an interesting balancing: bright color and natural (because there are no perfectly straight lines in nature) forms.

The web environment has a kind of Oscar — WebbyAwards. He is awarded with the same frequency once a year. As a rule, sites are evaluated by criteria of manufacturability, creativity, usability convenience and the quality of the content on them. A good site is not just a cool shell, but also content that works in conjunction with the design. But digital is a very dynamic sphere, it will be dishonest to wait a whole year for awarding an award to people who make websites a lot and often.

When you need to be inspired, get advice or hint, you can always go to Awwwards and CSS Design Awards and see the work from all over the world. What appears there, comes to our market, albeit with a delay.

Source: StartUpON — accelerator for start-up entrepreneurs.

Trainers: Irina Dubovik and Yuri Bespalov