Getting a great website: a step-by-step guide

A free Design Council resource for small businesses

Surfing the internet using a mouse

We have created this free guide to explain how you can improve your business with a great website.

Get advice on finding a web designer, working out what your business needs, deciding how your new website will work and keeping the project on time and on budget.

Over the next six chapters, we will cover:


These days, companies of all shapes and sizes will have a website. But not all have been designed with their customers’ needs in mind. That’s where a web designer can help. If a website meets your customer needs, then your business can only benefit.

Take, for example, the success of the Amazon online retailer. Since launch, the company has continued to grow and expand its product lines. Yet its homepage still manages to let customers browse and search all sorts of products in a simple, uncluttered manner. In 2008 it redesigned its UK site after consultation with customers around the world, demonstrating that it’s able to adapt and evolve as its company grows and its customers’ needs change.

In many cases, businesses may not know why they need a new website, apart from the fact that the old one is not working to its full potential.

Reasons you may need a new website include:

  • Increase sales by allowing customers to purchase online
  • Keep ahead of the competition with a professional online presence
  • Decrease costs by doing away with overheads
  • Attract more members or customers by promoting a positive brand image
  • Encourage interaction and feedback with your customers

Revamping your website, or starting one from scratch, isn’t as straightforward as getting someone to put together a pretty design and launching it to an unsuspecting public. The reality is that competition for your customers is fierce, and the wrong strategy for your website can send people running to your rivals.

Employing a specialist web design company to help you do your customer research, plan the scope of your website and get your execution spot on, could be the best investment your business can ever make.

Download this guide

Getting a great website is also available in PDF format for you to keep or print.

Front page of the Getting a great website PDF

Download this guide as a PDF


New website boosts NS&I's online sales by £44m

In 2005, the government's National Savings & Investments department (NS&I) redesigned their website to make it clearer, simpler and more accessible for users.

www.nsandi.comJust eight weeks later, NS&I's online sales rose from £3m to £47m.

Read the full story and see how website design could help improve your business.