Traditionally, you’d think that the product or service would speak on behalf of the business. As long as potential customers and clients enjoy the end result, it should be more than enough to drive traffic and attention to your company. However, in our vastly modern and digital world that operates 24/7 online, this concept is no longer the reality we face. And if you’re among the people who’ve set aside your website, then it might be high-time for you to reconsider your priorities.
Your Website Represents Your Business
Nearly 4.5 billion people are actively online and surfing the Internet. When any of them eventually land on your website, this is your only chance to catch their interest and convert them into customers. Your website is your business’s face to the digital world, and whatever you have to show will ultimately decide your credibility and accountability in your respective industry.
A well-designed and thought out website will do your business wonders, increase traffic, and turn visitors into customers. And on the opposite end, a poorly designed website with an unclear message can make visitors doubt your credibility and expertise.
The significance of website design and development to a business will only continue to grow as the number of Internet users increases. As such, it is imperative to your success that you must take the necessary steps to optimize your presence online.
Improving Design and Aesthetics
Utilizing design elements and aesthetics to your advantage is at the core of catching, converting, and keeping potential customers and clients. A good-looking website can encourage a visitor to explore what you have to offer and spend more time scrolling through your products and services. The key is to find a balance of design and information, you don’t want the design to overpower the information, and you don’t want a website that’s information-heavy but with no style at all.
- Think Color Theory: An excellent palace to start is by understanding color psychology and choosing a palette that best matches your brand’s message. Certain colors can evoke specific emotions, like how yellow displays cheerfulness and red can evoke a sense of urgency. Apply these principles to your website’s overall look, the colors of your logo, and even the typography.
- Make It Responsive: Apart from a good design, your website also needs to be snappy and responsive. All it takes is for an absurdly long waiting time between pages to lose visitors’ interest. So, hire a web developer or outsource the work needed for optimizing your pages’ loading speed.
Marketing-Oriented
Once you’ve covered all the bases for design and information, you also need to remember that your company’s website should be marketing-oriented. Its goal is to create leads that turn into paying customers. While the substance is critical, if your website fails to connect or link back to all your other channels, it fails halfway through the process.
- Link Your Social Media: From Instagram, Facebook, and even your company’s LinkedIn profile, linking back to your company’s social media presence and vice versa will help increase engagement and the rate of conversion. Strong links will let you capitalize on multiple online users from different platforms and help advertise your business more effectively.
- Utilize SEO: Google search results and rankings matter, and you want your business to come up first when someone’s looking for a specific product or service. So, ensure that you utilize SEO and get the most out of keywords, tags, and content to drive more traffic onto your website.
- End with a Call to Action: Most websites get the marketing and design aspect right but don’t have anything actionable for the visitor to click. Instead of leaving them on a cliffhanger, always end with a call to action in the form of subscribing to a newsletter, signing up for a webinar, or maybe even a free ebook.
Stay Consistent
Last but not least, you want to articulate your brand message and stay consistent. If your website has conflicting messages compared to your social media presence, this can work to your disadvantage and make you lose out on credibility. A good example would be using an anchor statement or having a signature proposition like professional mortgage consultancy services or an open-world game design specialist.
On the topic of consistency, also make sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices. There’s a considerable gap in design between desktop and mobile view, which could severely hamper people’s user experience browsing on their phone. So, it is in your best interest to make your website look good on both mobile and desktop viewing.
Don’t Disregard the Effectiveness of a Good Website
Overall, creating a good website now plays a more prominent role than ever in marketing your brand image and advertising your products and services. And while we’ve barely scratched the surface of web design and development, we’ve hopefully convinced you to put them as your top priority. Feel free to share this with your friends and business partners so they, too, can learn the importance of a beautiful website.