Design with a Purpose: How Strategic America Elevates Web and UX Design

You don’t just want a website that looks great; you want a responsive, user-friendly, and optimized website to appeal to your target audience. Strategic America (SA) website design experts Ronnie Miller and Jami Sinclair understand what it takes to create a strategically planned and executed website that aligns with a client’s brand while effectively serving its audience. From website design fundamentals to the best UX design practices, Miller and Sinclair share how SA’s web team creates websites that suit a diverse array of businesses.

Foundations of Effective Web Design

When asked about the key elements of a successful web design, Miller emphasized the importance of clarity and structure. Clear, effective calls to action (CTA), concise navigation, visual hierarchy and responsive design are all essential to a great web design. Visual hierarchy refers to the way elements are organized on a page to indicate their importance and guide the user through their journey.

Sinclair expanded upon this, noting that visual hierarchy is about more than just the layout. “Making sure your most important information is highly visible and easy to read is essential. Typography, bolding, and even iconography will all help guide the user,” said Sinclair.

The key to effective web design is to structure elements that are easy to scan and understand, whether that’s through clear CTAs, intuitive navigation, or responsive layouts. This ensures that the users can quickly grasp what your website is about and what actions they need to take next, leading to increased engagement and potential customer growth. To keep your web page visually appealing and easy for the customer to use, it’s important to know the difference between UX and UI design to help streamline your web design process.

Understanding the Difference: UI vs UX

“UI is like the tip of the iceberg, and UX is everything underneath. UI is the visual interface, but UX is the entire experience a user has with your brand,” said Sinclair. “They need each other. The UX informs the UI, it’s about making sure the design supports the user’s journey.”

User Experience (UX) focuses on the holistic journey of the customer with the brand, prioritizing users’ needs and perspective. While user interface (UI) refers to the visual and interactive elements users engage with when using a digital product or service, such as a website. UI is a crucial element of UX design because it directly impacts how users perceive and use the product; both must work in harmony with each other to create a well-designed, user-friendly website.

Accessibility and Designing for Diverse Clientele

Accessibility is a core part of SA’s design philosophy. Miller and Sinclair utilize tools such as Figma and other browser tools to meet AA contrast standards. These standards, defined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), ensure that text on websites is readable for users with visual impairments, including color blindness and low vision. “We always consider color contrast and readability, especially for CTAs. It’s about making sure everything is visible and usable,” Miller noted.

Including alt text and collaborating with the SEO team not only makes your website more inclusive, but it also helps reach your target audience. This improves the searchability of your website, making it easier to reach a larger audience. Miller and Sinclair also have to consider the variety of screens users will interact with when they design.

“It really helps when we understand who the target audience is. We plan what information needs to be on the page and what visuals will resonate,” shared Sinclair.

Building adaptable frameworks and understanding what your users are looking for helps you create a website that best suits your target audience. Miller and Sinclair plan ahead by conducting competitor analysis, performing user testing to validate the design choices, and then adapting their designs as needed. This not only helps them understand what their target audience is looking for, but also what differentiates the clients from competitors.

Web Design Trends and Best Practices

Trends in web design are constantly shifting, whether companies’ goals are changing or technology is evolving, both designers agree that web design work is never quite done.

“It’s a journey,” said Miller. “You’re always going to add new services or products. Your team will change but making sure that you know or that we are aware of your future goals and current goals will help us design and build a flexible website that will be just as effective in the future as the day you launch it.”

By staying plugged into what your competitors and other industry professionals in your area of expertise are doing, you’re able to stay ahead of the curve. Continuously learning and understanding what’s valuable in a modern website will benefit you, especially if you invest in discovery.

“If you invest more time into research and testing, you’re going to be able to navigate those challenges more quickly during the design period … once you launch, that’s not the end of the project, you should always look at it as evolving,” said Sinclair.

Websites are evolving tools, not static products. Allowing your brand to thrive through unique yet accessible designs and researching what appeals to different audience members will be one of the best investments you can make for your website.

Through SA’s collaborative and strategic approach, the web design and UX design team can craft research-backed, user-friendly designs that can cater to your customers’ needs. That’s why our web/UX design team is there to guide you through the evolving web world.

Jami Sinclair is a UX/UI designer and Ronnie Miller is a senior web designer at Strategic America (SA), an integrated marketing and communications agency in West Des Moines, Iowa. Learn more about our web design and services.