Start with the user. Everything else follows.
Your new website is exciting. Fresh brand guidelines. A new logo. Photography that finally does you justice. Maybe some video, some movement, some life.
Go for it. All of it.
Just don't let the aesthetics distract you from the thing that actually matters: what your users need.
Conversion is the point
Your website is a business tool. Its job is to move people.
Move people towards:
an enquiry
a purchase
a call
a decision.
Everything else is in service of that.
In a world of shrinking attention spans and instant everything, users don't hunt. They don't click through five pages to find what they came for. If the path isn't clear, they leave.
Clear. Concise. Credible. That's the brief.
Start with discovery – not design
Before wireframes, before colour palettes, before anything: understand your audience.
Who are they? What do they actually want? And - this part matters - remove yourself from the equation.
Stop asking
"what do we want to say?"
Ask
"what do they want to hear?"
These are different questions. They often lead to very different answers.
The same goes for structure. Organising your navigation around internal departments might make sense to you. It probably won't make sense to your users. Their mental model isn't your org chart. Build the experience around their logic, not yours. Watch your language, too – jargon that's second nature inside the business can quietly confuse or alienate the people you're trying to reach.
Rain can help you with this:
Know what success looks like before you start
If your site is performing better in six months, what does that mean?
More leads? More enquiries? More sales?
Not just more traffic – volume without conversion is noise. Setting clear benchmarks before you build keeps decisions honest and gives you something real to improve against.
Launch is the beginning, not the end
It's easy to treat go-live as the finish line. It isn't.
Your site is a living thing. It needs attention, iteration, and the flexibility to change when the data tells you something isn't working. That's why the underlying platform matters. A capable CMS like Umbraco means you're not locked out of your own site every time something needs to shift.
Rain provide ongoing support and maintenance
Three things to carry into every website project
Establish your audience early. Understand who they are and what they need before anything else is decided.
Build content and structure around them. Not around your preferences, your departments, or your internal language.
Define success upfront. Know what you're aiming for and how you'll measure it.
The new logo is great. The colours, the imagery. That's the cherry on top!
Just make sure you've built the cake first.
