As a web developer team, our responsibility is in providing support to other companies. We make sure that websites look and work well for the businesses that need them. Our team serves as an expert extension of our clients so they can focus on their actual operations.

We take pride in our work and it looks like our efforts are paying off. We’re very happy to announce that we’ve been given an award. SoBold was named as a top UK web developer by Clutch for the year 2021.

Clutch is a ratings and reviews company that uses a unique verification process that ensures all of the content on their platform comes from legitimate sources. They then leverage this information to create ranked lists of the best performers in every industry around the world. The best of the best then get an award.

The best part of all this award is that it’s not decided by a panel of faceless judges. It’s based on the reactions of the people that worked directly with us. They’re the people in the best position to judge or critique our work. In fact, here’s what our Director had to say when we got the news.

“We are absolutely delighted to be chosen as one of the leading WordPress Development agencies in the UK by Clutch and look forward to continued growth and development to fulfil our potential.” Will Newland, Managing Director, SoBold.

If you want to partner with a team that will provide expert support and service to ensure your website is the best it can be, give us a call. Fill out our contact form and we’ll set up an appointment as soon as possible.

As technology continues to evolve and advance rapidly, more of our daily lives are taking place in a digital-first context. When marketing your products and services, this means:

• Your target audience now has a shorter attention span, and less patience when browsing websites and services online.
• Your target audience also has more choice of options than ever before when choosing who to buy from. 

Modern users demand the same speed and convenience they get from the industry-leading sites and apps they use every day. That means you only have a matter of seconds to make a positive, memorable connection with your visitors. 

UX design, therefore, serves as a critical phase within the end-to-end process of web design. This is essentially the practice of creating a website that allows your visitors to complete a process, take an action, or fulfill their need in as few steps or clicks as possible.

Despite its ever-increasing importance, UX design is a process that many businesses, and even many agencies, still struggle to get right. 

To ease this challenge, and help you ensure your own website’s UX is designed effectively, we’ve written this article to outline the process in detail. We’ll also provide advice and tips to help you ensure your website can provide your target audience with an experience that drives them towards your desired outcomes.

What is UX Design?

The aim of UX design is to make it quick, easy, and convenient for your visitors to complete a task or process, or follow a call-to-action. Your UX involves everything from functionality, navigation, accessibility, layout, structure, and even the site’s content itself. 

Designing your website in a way that’s intuitive and easy-to-use will provide your visitors with a satisfying UX. It’s important to note here that UX design shouldn’t be confused or bundled up with user interface (UI) design. UI design is its own separate phase of the process that comes slightly later. 

Understanding the Design Process as a Whole

Research and Planning 

Earlier in the overall design process, before you approach the UX, you should’ve gone through a thorough research and planning phase with your design agency.  

This is important in ensuring that every decision you make towards your UX and UI will produce a more effective website capable of meeting your business goals and your audience’s needs. 

Working alongside your agency, you’ll use this research to define the full scope of your website and all its requirements. This will include the creation of user personas and user journeys. These will help you determine the most simple and efficient flow for your visitors to take through your website to each call-to-action, and this is how your UX is created. 

This research will guide both your UX design and UI design processes.

Related reading: Understanding the Important Role of Research and Planning When Designing a New Website.

Visual Exploration

Your agency partner should then produce a set of mood boards that you’ll use to create the aesthetic style of your site in line with your brand. These mood boards help you visualise the way your website will look and feel when built. 

This is a precursor to your UI design, and it’s done before the UX phase to ensure the overall style is correct before any more design work is completed.

This is another collaborative process, where your agency should advise you with their expertise and experience from delivering successful website projects in the past.

Related reading: What is Visual Exploration in the Process of Web Design?

The UX Process 

Information Architecture 

The information architecture of your website is devised by building a sitemap, which is a map of all the necessary pages across your entire website. You’ll likely have an existing one from your current site, but this will probably need updating based on all the new research and strategic planning you’ve done. 

From the sitemap, you’ll have a list of all the pages and content required to populate your site. Your agency will then build out a content base framework, noting any content that you need support in developing.  

The users’ navigation through the site needs to be tailored to the objectives you’ve set and the research findings from earlier. It also needs to be built in a way that allows for flexibility and scalability later, as your requirements evolve and your business grows. 

High-Fidelity Wireframes 

Wireframes are used to design the user experience of your website. This is essentially like creating a blueprint of your website’s pages prior to beginning the actual design work, detailing the site’s flow and the users’ journey through it.

These wireframes are used to determine how the user can reach their desired outcome, or reach your desired call-to-action, in as few clicks or steps as possible. Remember, the purpose of UX design is to optimise that journey. 

Here at SoBold, we use high-fidelity wireframes that provide a clear, detailed representation of the users’ flow to all calls-to-action. This is directed and influenced by the things we learned in the research and planning phase. 

These wireframes are typically built on a standard desktop size, but they can be done on a mobile device screen size if you want your site to be designed mobile-first. 

Wireframes are used to create the UX so you don’t get distracted by the visual design when evaluating the user journeys. This allows you to focus completely on the flow and the experience the user will have when visiting your site, without worrying about the aesthetic elements. It proves to be a much more effective approach towards creating an experience that will satisfy your visitors and help you achieve your objectives.

Again, this will be a collaborative process in which you’ll work closely with your agency, providing feedback on the wireframes to ensure they align with your requirements.

Once the mood boards and the wireframes are approved, all that’s left to do is apply the design to the wireframes to bring your website’s design to life. This makes the UI design process very quick and easy from here.

A Quick Word on Accessibility  

Accessibility is a crucial aspect of any user experience. 

Accessibility refers to how easy and accessible technology is for all users, regardless of their physical ability, location, personal background, or any other factors. While accessibility is primarily a concern for the UI design team, it’s also important in optimising your UX as well. After all, a website that isn’t accessible simply cannot be considered to have a good UX.

If accessibility isn’t included as a core component of your web design process, you should raise this as a concern with your agency.

Here at SoBold, accessibility is a key part of all our design processes, as we believe that all technology must be fully inclusive and equally available to everyone.

Related reading: You can learn all about what it takes to deliver good usability through your website in our related article here.

Finding the Optimum Balance 

As touched on earlier, your target audience will be visiting your site with a goal in mind, and the UX is what enables them to achieve that easily.

Of course, you also have business objectives to achieve through your website, which must also be supported by UX design. That creates the need for balance between a UX that serves your visitors and supports your business strategy simultaneously. Your design should also play the important role of directing visitors to the calls-to-action that you want them to engage with. 

Finding this balance is a challenge, and one that could have a negative impact if you get it wrong. This is where the guidance and expertise of a specialist agency partner becomes so important. All design is collaborative and iterative, and UX design is all about compromising to find the right balance. 

The Business Benefits of Great UX 

Finding a design agency you can trust, and investing the time to work with them to craft a truly outstanding user experience, will prove well worth it in the long-run. 

UX design is complex, but the right agency can guide you by demystifying the process and helping you make the right decisions at every step. Finding that aforementioned balance between your strategic objectives and your target audience’s best interests can have a transformational impact on the performance of your website.  

Providing your visitors with a great UX can deliver a wealth of other benefits as well, not only to the performance of your website but to your wider business too. For instance, a study by 

Forrester Research found that a well-designed UX has the power to raise conversion rates for your website by an incredible 400%. 

Some of these additional benefits include: 

• Boost SEO and brand awareness
• Improve audience engagement 
• Reduce bounce rates
• Increase conversions 
• Drive more sales through your website 
• Accelerate business growth
• Improve customer retention and loyalty
• Gain competitive advantages. 

Your UX isn’t Complete Without User Interface Design 

The key thing to remember is that good UX design is really just helping your website visitors travel from their entry point to wherever they need to get to as easily and efficiently as possible.

In the UX phase of your project, you need to consider who the user is, what they’re aiming to do, and then determine how to enable them to do that with an intuitive design.

Once your UX design begins to come together, and you’re satisfied with everything, the next step will be for your agency partner to begin to design your user interface.

While UX and UI are separate, they’re also intrinsically linked. They need to work together seamlessly and complement each other in order for your website to be successful. 

In our next article, we’ll walk you through the topic of UI and help you ensure your user experience is brought to life with an effective visual design.

If you’d like to take a step back and learn more about the overall process of web design, read our related article here.

When a visitor lands on your website, the visual design is likely to be the first thing they’ll notice. It’s also usually the thing they’ll remember most. 

75% of consumers reportedly judge a business’s credibility based on its website design. This first impression can make or break a prospective client’s interest in working with you. 

The ultimate goal of your website is to attract and retain as many prospects as possible, and then convert them into clients. But most websites are designed in a way that leaves those goals unfulfilled, failing to reach their full potential. 

With that in mind, your visual identity should be treated as a top priority within the overall design of your website. Believe it or not, this can have a significant influence on the growth and success of your business.

When working on a web design project, you should always go through a careful visual exploration phase to find the right visual identity for your website. 

Whether you’re going through a full company rebrand or just refreshing the style of your website, it’s important to ensure your design is tailored to your specific target audience. This is how you begin to drive business growth through your website. 

Without a visual exploration process, your website may not convey your company’s brand identity and values as clearly as you’d like it to. 

In this article, we’ll outline the steps taken so you’ll know what to expect when working on a website design project. 

What Does the Process Involve?

The purpose of this process is to define the best visual direction to take with your site. 

This is a crucial aspect of your overall design, with aesthetic elements being brought together to create a look and feel that engages your site’s visitors and retains their attention. To achieve that, your visual design needs to establish a connection between your audience and your brand immediately. It should also demonstrate why your visitors should work with you. 

Exploring your visual identity will cover a wide range of elements, including: 

• Your brand 
• Your company values
• Your colour scheme 
• Your typography
• Imagery and other visual content
• Structuring of pages
• And other visual components that are used to tell your brand’s story across your website’s design. 

What are Mood Boards and How Can You Use them? 

The main tool used to help determine the right visual identity is a set of mood boards. 

These are a visual compilation of all the various elements that make up your website’s visual design. Each mood board is essentially just a single-page collage of design styles based on previous discussions and the findings from the research and planning phase of the process.

The aim of these is to capture your brand’s visual style and tone. This will give the stakeholders, and your designers, a shared understanding of the design you’re working towards. 

Mood-boarding helps you visualise the work on your website’s design before it begins and agree on a design aesthetic that accurately reflects your brand identity and values. 

Think of this like a problem-solving exercise. Your design agency will take a research and data-driven approach to conveying your brand identity, while also catering to your target audience and accommodating the latest industry trends.

Collaboration and Iteration

Like most processes within web design and development, this visual exploration process should be collaborative and iterative. 

You’ll typically be presented with a mood board and a set of ideas by your agency partner, then given the chance to provide feedback across several rounds of revisions. 

Rounds and revisions are always important in any creative process. It’s usually necessary for your agency to develop and present a minimum of three mood boards before the optimum aesthetic is agreed upon. This is a crucial step towards the ultimate goal of creating a new website that accurately reflects your brand and has a positive impact on your target audience. 

Connecting with Your Clients Through Design

Your website’s visual identity is what makes your brand resonate with your target audience. Your design needs to clearly convey the values of your business, the quality of your products and services, and the reason why your visitors would benefit from working with you. 

Working through this visual exploration phase is an important step towards designing a website that will attract more visitors and increase your conversions. 

Once this visual exploration is complete, the next phase of your web design process will be to craft your website’s user experience (UX).

For over two decades, Google has been the dominant force in search, shaping the way users access information online. But recent data and a declining share price indicates Google’s once-unquestioned supremacy is beginning to show cracks.

As of January 2025, Google’s market share had remained under 90% for four consecutive months, sitting at 89.78%. This decline marks a significant shift, as prior to October 2024, the last time Google’s market share dipped below 90% was in March 2015. Meanwhile Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has seen its stock price fall 20% (as of March 11, 2025) following a disappointing earnings report and volatility in the US stock market.

While Google remains the dominant player, growing competition from other search engines, AI-driven search alternatives, increased scrutiny over search result quality, and evolving user behaviour all raise serious questions about the company’s long-term future. SEOs, digital marketing professionals and businesses must take note of these shifts and prepare for a changing landscape.

Google’s Declining Market Share: Key Trends

Google’s market share had been above 90% since 2015, but the recent downturn suggests a gradual erosion of dominance. October 2024 marked the lowest point in over a decade (89.34%), highlighting a downward trajectory that coincides with competitors like Bing and Yandex making small but notable gains:

• In October 2024, Bing recorded its second-highest market share ever (4.16%), the highest since 2011.
• Yandex reached a record-high market share of 2.78% in the same month.
• This decline in Google’s market share does not account for AI-based search alternatives, meaning the real shift could be even more pronounced.
• Whilst Google is still dominant and search competitors still pale in comparison, the direction of the trend is noteworthy and something SEOs and businesses should closely monitor.

A recent study of UK and US users found 27% now prefer AI chatbots like ChatGPT over traditional search engines. AI-driven search alternatives are altering user behaviour by providing direct answers without the need for traditional search engine result pages as tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity AI, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), deliver instant, research-driven responses, reducing reliance on Google for informational queries.

This shift to LLMs and AI platforms is underlined by data showing:

• 57% of respondents use AI daily.
• 49% see AI and traditional search engines as interchangeable.
• 67% believe AI will replace traditional search within three years.

In response, Google has started integrating AI into its search experience via the Google Search Generative Experience (SGE), or AI Overviews. 

However, reaction to Google’s jump into AI has been mixed, with concerns over bias, accuracy, and its role in increasing zero-click searches, leading to outcry from the SEO world and from companies harmed. Education platform Chegg is suing Google regarding Google’s AI Overviews, alleging AI-generated content is infringing on their educational material. There are numerous examples of AI Overviews providing users with incorrect information, including suggesting users can eat rocks, stick cheese to pizza with glue, and misattributing awards to different musicians, including claiming US indie musician MJ Lenderman has won 14 Grammys, when the true number is zero, which corresponds with a recent Vox Media survey found that 42% of respondents believe Google Search is becoming less useful. While Google’s lead remains substantial, the shift suggests that users are actively exploring alternatives—not just AI tools, but competing search engines as well.

Anecdotal evidence from popular forums like Reddit suggests growing dissatisfaction with Google’s search results. Users have expressed frustration over declining result quality, increased ad placements, and ineffective AI-generated search responses:

• “Does Google realize they already had a really good search engine? The AI doesn’t work. It sucks.” (5.6k upvotes)
• “It’s shaping up to fit in with the shockingly poor Google Search results that are loaded with sponsored garbage.” (2.3k upvotes)
• “Even when you get to the first results, they are usually useless articles, AI-generated content, or sales pitches.” (2.3k upvotes)

But for now, this criticism is not slowing Google down. Recent data claims AI Overviews now appear in 42% of Google search results, and last week Google announced AI Mode, search results pages which now only exclusively show AI-generated results.

The Search Landscape has vastly changed in a short amount of time, with SEO professionals and businesses reliant on Search left no choice but to adapt to these changes. From our recap of BrightonSEO back in October 2024, we reported that when an AI Overview appears in a Google search, organic click-through rates (CTR) drop by 70%. By January 2025, a new study has revealed this estimated CTR decline to have reached 84%.

SEO isn’t dead or dying, but is evolving at a faster pace than we’ve become accustomed to. Declining CTRs due to more AI Overviews means data optimisation is more important than ever, as is having the knowledge and resources to capitalise when opportunities arise.

This evolving search landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for SEO and digital marketing. With AI reshaping user behaviour, businesses must consider multi-platform strategies and optimise for AI-driven search as well as traditional search engines. SEO remains essential, but the rise of AI-driven platforms underscores the importance of conversion optimisation and data analysis. Businesses need to make the most of their traffic, and the utilisation of tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Looker Studio for tracking user behaviour and refining marketing strategies has never been more important.

Google’s Stock Price Downturn After February’s Earnings

At the time of writing, Google’s parent company Alphabet has seen its stock fall by 20% since its most recent earnings report. Revenue growth in key sectors, including cloud computing, fell short of expectations which fuelled investor concerns as Wall Street firms cut Alphabet’s price target, citing increased competition and AI disruption. This includes Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Citi. Analysts have explained this is due to tougher year-on-year comparisons in search revenue and anticipated increases in expenditures, such as higher spend on AI to adapt to the changing market. 

Google remains the dominant player in search, but its supremacy is being tested as alternative search engines, privacy-focused platforms, and AI tools gain traction. The company is heavily investing in AI and cloud services to counteract market shifts, including plans to increase capital expenditures with $75 billion earmarked for AI development and expansion. Google has also invested $3 billion into Anthrophic, and have been boosted by the Department of Justice recently deciding not to proceed with a plan that would’ve required Alphabet to sell its stakes in AI firms. 

Google is heavily investing in AI and cloud computing to maintain its competitive edge, but its cloud division’s underperformance and search revenue expectations raise questions for Wall Street, investors, SEOs and businesses about its long-term dominance. SEOs and businesses must prepare for a future where Google is no longer the sole gateway to online visibility.

Of course, there’s wider geo-political uncertainty and volatility in the stock markets stemming from the policies of the Trump administration. But this sort of stock downturn and decline in market share isn’t a surprise to many within the SEO community. SEOs and businesses crave consistency and stability, and the flurry of sweeping changes from Google over the past two years has provided anything but.

So what does the future hold?

Google’s declining market share reflects a broader shift in how users seek information. While AI-powered search tools and alternative search engines continue to grow, SEO remains crucial. The past year has seen the term Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) coined, focusing on optimising content for discoverability by LLMs. For marketers and businesses, this marks a wider shift, from not just ranking well in search results, but adapting to the evolution of user behaviour as LLMs continue to gain precedence. 

Companies must adapt by:

• Tracking and analysing search trends across platforms.
• Optimising for both traditional search and AI-driven search tools.
• Enhancing conversion funnels to capitalise on the traffic they do receive.

The search landscape is changing, and businesses that evolve alongside it will be best positioned for success. At SoBold, we can help you navigate these shifts and develop a strategy that keeps you ahead in an AI-driven digital world.

Summary

In this article, we’ll outline the end-to-end steps of what takes place in a thorough user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) web design process and discuss what modern web design requires to be successful.

—

You may have read our in-depth guide to creating a brief for a web design and development project. A brief can be used to capture all your ideas and requirements before discussing your project with any web design and development agencies. 

Once you’ve completed your brief, and evaluated your options for agency partners, you’ll be ready to launch into your website project. 

An end-to-end website project is typically organised into phases, which will usually be structured as follows: 

1. Design
2. Development
3. Quality Assurance Testing
4. Migration and Launch.

We’ve provided a detailed breakdown of these phases in a recent series of articles. This series is intended to give you a clear understanding of the full end-to-end process involved when working with an agency to design and develop a website. This will help you remove any apprehension heading into this kind of project and set you up for success.

The Current State of Web Design

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Steve Jobs, Co-Founder and former CEO of Apple.

While web design does focus on the visual aspects of the site, there’s a lot more to it than just the aesthetic elements like colour schemes and typography. 

Web design is a complex blend of branding, user experience (UX) design, user interface (UI) design, graphic design, content creation, layout and structure, accessibility, and much more.

The design of your website needs to be visually attractive but, more importantly, it also needs to be simple and easy-to-use. Your website needs to find the perfect balance between supporting your strategic objectives and serving your clients with a seamless experience. Of course, that’s much easier said than done, which is why it’s so important to find an experienced partner you can trust to guide you through the process. 

Outlining the Web Design Process 

Phase 1 – Research and Planning

The phase that underpins  EVERYTHING!

A good agency will have absorbed everything in your project brief. They should also have worked hard to understand your perspective and your requirements from your website, before you’ve even agreed to work together. 

Once you’re preparing to launch the project, the research and planning phase will then go beyond that initial information gathering exercise. 

The objective of this phase is to define the full scope of the website, including its design, its features and functionality, its content, and everything else involved. 

Your site will be discussed in extensive detail, and then research will be conducted into some key areas that will inform your design and development, such as:

• Strategy
• Website Data 
• Target Audience
• Industry Landscape
• Competitors.

Whether you’re making small updates to an existing design or completely rebranding your business, it’s equally important to use this research to inform every decision you make. That’s because every element of your site’s design must be made to support your business goals and serve your target audience with a great user experience (UX). 

This research and planning phase is essential in enabling you and your agency partner to do that. 

Phase 2 – Visual Exploration

This exploratory phase involves defining the most appropriate and effective visual direction to take with your site. 

The main tool used to help determine the right visual identity for your website is a set of mood boards. These are a visual compilation of different options for colour, typography, structure, images, and other visual components that are used to tell your brand’s story through your website’s design. 

A good agency partner will usually present around three mood boards to help shape the direction, then collaborate with you to narrow it down to one final version. 

Visual exploration, like most processes within web design and development, will be collaborative and iterative. You’ll be presented with ideas by your agency partner, then given the chance to provide feedback across several rounds of revisions. 

Phase 3 – User Experience (UX) Design

The UX design process is the phase in which you work with your agency’s UX specialist to create a blueprint of the website functionality. 

This involves creating wireframes (either low-fidelity or high fidelity) that help you visualise the design and outline your website visitors’ flow through the pages into your main calls-to-action. This is the way the website’s design works strategically to drive outcomes that align with your business goals.

This phase takes place before working on the site’s visual design to ensure the two separate aspects complement each other. 

Phase 4 – User Interface (UI) Design

From there, your user interface (UI) will be designed. The styles, fonts, and look and feel of the site from the mood boards will be applied to the wireframes. 

Your agency will likely present you with a design for your homepage before moving on to the rest of the site. This will typically be done on a desktop screen size, but it can be done on mobile if you want to take a mobile-first approach. Once this is complete, it will then be designed across the relevant breakpoints.

After completing this process, your agency partner will be ready to enter into developing your website.

Making Complex Processes Simple

As technology continues to become more advanced, more and more of our daily lives now take place in a digital-first context. This means:

• Your target audience now has a shorter attention span, and less patience when browsing websites and services online
• Your target audience also has more choice of options than ever before when choosing who to buy from. 

In order to succeed, your website’s design requires careful planning, research, and a strategic approach if it hopes to meet the demands of the modern client.

Working with a specialist design and development agency is a proven approach to ensuring you gain a website that meets your requirements and delivers on the expectations of your target audience. 

Completing a process like the one outlined in this article will enable you to design a website that can become your clients’ go-to online source when they have a need. 

As mentioned earlier, we’ve provided a step-by-step guide to each of these phases to make the process even easier for you. 

To learn how to easily navigate the research and planning phase of a web design and development project, read our next article here.