Why is a Discovery Phase Important for the Success of Your Business Website?

Every business owner expects their website development project to be completed on time, on the allocated budget with improved customer satisfaction, and most of all, it should generate better revenue for the business. While most web developers gather insight through research and analysis, some fall short in identifying potential opportunities and online trends.

For web developers and designers to build an efficient business website, they significantly require a comprehensive view of the complete customer journey, as well as the ability to obtain deep, granular insight on what is driving customer experience. They need to thoroughly understand market demands, business pain points, and action items even before starting the initial phase of web development.

Especially in today’s fierce digital competition and ever-changing technology requirements, most business websites are unable to adapt to the growing needs and thereby fall behind competitors. One of the main factors for this is that while developing the website, most developers only give priority to the current customer requirements and market demands.

They do not properly plan for the future or ensure that the website will work efficiently in the long term. In order to please their clients, by meeting their requirements quickly, web developers tend to avoid the initial discovery phase that is very much imperative for website development in Toronto.

What is a Website Discovery Phase?

Developing an efficient website is critical for the success of any digital business, especially if your business relies on online revenue. Therefore, it is imperative that web developers and designers not only focus on just the client requirements but also other aspects such as digital trends, current technologies, user demands, market changes, and much more.

The initial website discovery phase includes all this as it involves a full deep-dive interaction between clients and the website development team. For this, not just the developers and designers are involved but also the digital marketing team, business analysts, and most importantly the clients are involved.

The discovery phase intends to bring everyone together and brainstorm ideas, suggestions, requirements, and everything involved with the web development project. This allows everyone involved to work together on the project and understand exactly what the client requires and the best way to achieve it. The discovery phase also involves activities such as carrying out comprehensive market research, establishing goals and defining success, outlining the value proposition and understanding the broader context.

Why is the Website Discovery Phase Essential for Your Business?

The website discovery phase helps web developers to foresee and eliminate the risks that result in a slower time to market.. Also, web development agencies can identify key areas where there is a lack of market demand, so they can prevent spending time on those sections. It also eliminates unexpected expenses because the web developers have a clear picture of the user requirements.

Therefore, there is no doubt that the website discovery phase is the most important part of the development project because it helps business owners define requirements, features, business goals, and more. It also gives the opportunity for web developers and digital marketers to collaborate on the entire project, making the website more visible on prominent search engines such as Google.

Benefits of Website Discovery Phase

Establishes Business Goals

The discovery phase helps businesses determine the website’s scope, website’s requirements, and of course, business goals. It gives business leaders a better opportunity to reimagine what the website visitors actually want and how to provide it.

Once these business goals are enforced, decision-makers will be less confused about objectives. If not there is a high chance that businesses keep on changing their business goals during the development. This could be because competitor sites have made similar changes or because they were advised to do so by board members. Such changes and perplexity during the website development will lead to additional expense, more time to market, and sometimes even the initial business goals may not be achieved.

Leads to Better Solutions

While hiring a website developer or designer, every business owner will have a set of requirements for the website. Sometimes, these requirements may not be actually essential for the business or might be a complete waste of time. The discovery phase of a website allows web development agencies to discuss the project with the client in a better way. They can suggest better solutions that would be more beneficial than the actual client requirement and can lead to more profitable results in the future.

Focuses on business Objectives and Not simply on Deliverables

Most business owners will look for prospects to build their website within a budget and on time and may slightly ignore the actual objective of the site. Also, several web developers will actually agree to this in order to not lose a client. But what they do not mention is that such a website with poor search engine optimization, UI/UX, or layout will not guarantee success.

The discovery phase provides web development agencies a chance to discuss such potential impacts that the website could have in the future. Based on this the client can make necessary changes to the budget or requirements such that eventually the website increases leads, converts customers, improves sales, and moreover provides a return on investment.

Data-driven Approach

As mentioned earlier, the website discovery phase focuses on collaborating different resources for one aim; and that is an efficient website. It provides the opportunity for SEOs, designers, social media managers, web testers, developers, and sales teams to come together and share their opinion. It will enhance the web development project and more relevant solutions can be implemented into the website from the beginning itself. Nevertheless, your business website will be more engagement-driven and conversion-oriented.

Conclusion

For your business website to stay on budget, meet all your requirements, and get delivered on time, a discovery session might be exactly what you need. It’s not just theory or guesswork, but instead, it’s about using factual data, previous experience, and combined effort to uncover what your new website needs to keep going forward. Make sure you hire the right web developers and designers that are capable of leveraging bold thinking and innovative use of technology to scale up your development and help you achieve your goals online.

Author Bio:

Cindy Williams is a blogger in Canada. She is working as an outreach coordinator for Web Sharx, a company offering website design services in Toronto. She graduated with honors from the University of British Columbia with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing.

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