What Is Strategy Design? A Visual Guide to Pre-Design Work

The most common complaint from clients in web development projects is "it looks good but doesn't lead to sales" or "traffic increased but we're not getting inquiries." Company A spent 3 million yen renewing their corporate website, and while the design quality improved, their new customer acquisition numbers dropped to half of previous levels. Company B built a new e-commerce site and focused on product page visuals, but their purchase completion rate fell far below industry averages.

What these problems have in common is starting on "how to build" while "what to build" remains unclear. Clients often give instructions like "something like this" or "make it more stylish" while showing reference sites, but they cannot logically explain why those sites would be appropriate for achieving their business objectives. Creators can propose visual improvements, but they end up starting production without deeply understanding the client's business structure or competitive environment.

Strategy design solves this structural problem. Strategy design is a phase that logically connects business objectives with website functions and structure, clarifying the direction of production. Despite being an important process implemented before design and development, sufficient time and budget are not allocated to it in many projects.

The essence of strategy design is defining "who to reach, what to communicate, how to communicate it, and what actions to encourage" at the business level.

Specifically, this includes analyzing target customer behavior patterns, researching competitors' web strategies, extracting differentiation points that leverage company strengths, designing visitor flow paths, and setting conversion points. The role of the strategy design phase is to integrate these elements and document "what this website exists for and what results it should generate."

On the other hand, the design phase is the process of visually expressing the policies defined in strategy design. Color selection, font choices, layout composition, and image selection are all determined based on the target audience and messaging set in strategy design. The more skilled designers are, the better they can explain "why this color was chosen" and "why this layout was used" with strategic rationale.

When this boundary remains ambiguous during production, designers end up making strategic-level decisions, which easily leads to divergence from business objectives. Success requires clearly separating "web strategy design" and "what to do before site design," investing appropriate skills and time in each.

The documents that should be created in strategy design are as follows:

• Correspondence table between business objectives and web objectives
• Target customer personas and customer journeys
• Competitive analysis reports and differentiation strategies
• Site maps and role definitions for each page
• KPI settings and measurement methods

These deliverables become specific production instruction documents for designers and developers.

Strategy design is an area that clients should take the lead on. This is because only clients possess internal business information and future vision.

Stage 1: Business Analysis and Goal Setting

Start by objectively viewing your company's business structure. Organize sales composition ratios, customer acquisition channels, differentiation factors from competitors, and three-year business plans with numerical data. For example, understand specific business characteristics like "70% of new customers come through word-of-mouth" or "repeat rate is 1.5 times the industry average."

Next, define the role the website should play by working backward from business objectives. Measurable goal setting is necessary, such as "increase monthly inquiries from current 50 to 100" or "expand annual job applicants from 200 to 300."

Stage 2: Customer Analysis and Needs Assessment

Conduct interview surveys with existing customers to quantify the website's influence on their purchasing decision process. Collect data such as "average 3.2 site visits from initial contact to purchase" or "correlation between product page dwell time and purchase rate."

Also conduct surveys and interviews with potential new customers to understand their information-gathering behavior patterns. Clarify when they view websites, what information they prioritize, and their comparison process with competitors.

Stage 3: Competitive Analysis and Differentiation Strategy

Systematically analyze competitors' websites to understand trends in messaging, content composition, and flow design. Rather than simple visual comparisons, organize strategic-level differences such as "Competitor A focuses on price appeals" or "Competitor B emphasizes technical capabilities."

Identify areas where your company's uniqueness can be leveraged and consider expression methods on the website. Incorporate elements that can differentiate from competitors into content strategy, such as "20 years of experience," "local community service," or "patented technology."

Stage 4: Site Structure Design and Flow Planning

Create a site map based on target customer behavior patterns. Design multiple optimal flow patterns from the homepage to goal pages (contact forms, product purchase pages, etc.) and numerically predict the expected results of each.

Document the functions each page should fulfill. Clarify role divisions such as "company overview page for credibility appeal," "case study page for demonstrating concrete results," and "pricing page for facilitating comparison."

Only after completing these strategic phases is preparation for ordering from creators finished. You can communicate as production requirements with logical rationale rather than vague instructions.

There are clear patterns in the judgment errors that clients commonly fall into during strategy design.

Pitfall 1: Strategic Adoption of Competitor Imitation

Instructions like "make it similar to the industry leader's site structure" are among the most dangerous judgments. Large corporations and venture companies have fundamentally different business phases, brand recognition, and budget scales. Simply imitating brand-focused sites of large companies results in neglecting functions directly tied to sales.

For example, just because industry leader Company C places large brand images on their homepage doesn't mean three-year-old startup Company D should adopt the same composition. For Company D, detailed case studies and specific service descriptions are more important.

Pitfall 2: Priority Setting from Internal Perspective

There's also a frequent tendency to prioritize opinions of management and internal stakeholders while neglecting customer perspective. Internal requests like "we want to include detailed company history" or "we want to introduce all products equally" don't necessarily align with customer needs.

Actual customers are only interested in "whether this company can solve my problems." Case studies matter more than founding stories, and implementation results matter more than product catalogs for purchase decisions.

Pitfall 3: Complete Delegation Dependency on Creators

Many cases involve delegating strategy design to creators with the mindset "professionals will handle it properly." However, creators don't sufficiently understand internal business information or future strategies. The more skilled creators request detailed information from clients, but clients who can't respond only receive superficial improvement proposals.

The client's role in strategy design cannot be substituted by creators. Only when business leaders themselves take the initiative can websites truly connected to business results be realized.

Pitfall 4: Prioritizing Short-term Perspective Judgments

Short-term thinking like "let's get something done in 3 months for now" also degrades strategy design quality. Starting production without securing sufficient analysis time leads to major revisions later, ultimately increasing time and costs.

Investing 1-2 months in strategy design can significantly reduce rework in the production phase. The principle of "more haste, less speed" applies most to this area.

Strategy design phase completion should be judged by clear criteria. Transitioning to the design phase in an ambiguous state leads to mid-production direction changes and major revisions, causing confusion throughout the project.

Essential Conditions for Completion Judgment

First, the causal relationship between business objectives and web objectives must be explainable with numbers. This means being able to make specific numerical predictions like "to achieve 100 monthly inquiries, we need 10,000 monthly unique users" and "30% of those will view the company introduction page, and 15% will proceed to the service details page."

Second, target customer behavior patterns must be understood in detail. Customer journeys must be clarified, such as "first visit focuses on company overview, second visit examines case studies in detail, third visit compares pricing before inquiring."

Third, differentiation points from competitors must be translated down to expression methods on the website. Rather than simply "good quality," specific expression methods must be determined, such as "display third-party certification marks to prove quality" or "visualize 98% customer satisfaction survey results in graphs."

Handoff Materials to Creators

Materials to be provided to creators upon strategy design completion are as follows:

• Business overview and 3-year growth plan
• Detailed target customer personas (age, occupation, information-gathering behavior, etc.)
• Competitive analysis results and differentiation strategies
• Site map and purpose/role of each page
• Expected flow paths and KPI target values at each stage
• Required content list and priorities
• Reference sites and selection reasons

Only when these materials are complete can creators make design and development proposals based on strategy.

Strategy Continuation in the Design Phase

Policies set in strategy design continue to be referenced throughout the design phase. Constantly check whether all color selections, layout compositions, and content placements are determined based on strategic rationale.

For example, if the strategy is "credibility focus," choose calm color schemes over flashy ones and place performance numbers and certification marks in prominent positions. If the strategy is "innovation appeal," feature advanced design elements and latest technology use cases prominently.

The next action to take as a client is clear. If you have an ongoing web development project, assess the completeness of strategy design using the above criteria. If considering a new project, establish an internal strategy design system before selecting a production company. In either case, make decisions keeping in mind that investment in strategy design significantly affects final business results.