While traditional marketing strategies can still be effective, they’ve now become relegated to the realm of “supplemental activities.” Digital marketing has risen to the forefront in recent years, and these digital strategies are now the most crucial for the success of your business.
Your website is the lifeblood of your digital marketing strategy. All other efforts build off of it and without a strong website, it’s going to be extremely challenging for your digital marketing campaign to be successful. Therefore, it’s crucial that you put a considerable amount of thought and energy into designing your website.
While building a good website is essential to your business, it’s also not cheap when done right. So we understand if you’re still a little hesitant to move forward working with an experienced web design company that can deliver a finished product that will set you up for long term success. If you’re still trying to understand the benefits you’ll receive, the following discussion will explain 5 critical ways effective web design can help your business grow.
It Creates a Strong First Impression
For many individuals, your website will be their first interaction with your business. According to a Missouri University of Science and Technology study, it takes approximately 2.6 seconds for someone’s eyes to focus on the core elements of your web page after it loads. Therefore, you have an extremely short amount of time to make a first impression, and a strong, well planned design is crucial to your ability to make the most out of this first impression.
If you have a website with an outdated or unattractive appearance, it can cause individuals to form a negative impression of your business. Similarly, a cluttered page or a poorly organized navigation can make it hard for people to find the information they need. This will not provide the positive impression you’re looking to make, and it will likely drive visitors to a different website to find what they’re looking for.
Conversely, when you have an effective web design, it will catch your audience’s attention and draw them in. They will know where to focus their eyes, and they will clearly understand what you’re trying to convey with your branding. This will create a strong first impression that will help visitors remain on your page longer, encourage them to explore your website more deeply, and take your desired action. This will ultimately result in more leads.
It Builds Trust
It’s hard to trust information provided by a poorly designed website that looks cluttered, disorganized or outdated. If the design is this flawed, it is reasonable to assume the information reflects those same standards of quality.
For good or for bad, most individuals will judge the credibility of your business based on the appearance of your website and the quality of information it provides. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a modern, professional web design and quality, informative content which helps to build trust and establish your business as an authority. This will encourage your visitors to feel more confident exploring your website to find additional information that may help them, and it will make them want to learn more about your business.
The longer visitors remain on your website and the more they come to trust you as an industry authority, the more likely you are to capture these individuals as customers.
It Improves SEO Results
Your website won’t help grow your business if no one is able to find it. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a website that is properly optimized to rank highly on the search engines. While there are many factors that impact SEO results – comprehensive, informative content and back-end SEO best practices are essential – your website design will also have a significant impact on your search rankings.
A well designed website will improve your SEO results in a variety of ways, including:
- Using clean, modern code
- Adopting a mobile friendly, responsive design
- Providing a clear, well organized navigation architecture that makes it easy for users to find the information they need
- Engaging and interactive visual elements which keep visitors on the page longer
Most DIY website builder platforms are severely limited in their ability to address the items listed above. By working with an experienced web design company, you can be confident that these important web design best practices are being incorporated so that your website achieves the best possible SEO results.
It Creates a Consistent Brand Message
Your website is one of the most important opportunities you have to build your brand and convey your story to your target audience. It’s critical that that you leverage this opportunity to make your audience more familiar with your brand imagery and messaging.
To achieve this, your website will need to have consistent colors, styles, fonts and layouts across the entire site. In addition, these elements should match your brand standards. This not only reinforces your brand, but it also creates a more professional appearance throughout your website, which will help keep visitors on your website longer.
In addition to visually conveying your brand imagery, your website should help you tell your brand story. This is partly accomplished by the content on your website, but also by the home page elements and the navigation structure of your website. These items should highlight important aspects of your story and brand messaging, making it easy for visitors to start associating your company with your branding.
The more your target audience aligns with your brand, the more likely they are to start connecting with your messaging. This will help you convert more visitors into leads.
It Optimizes Conversions
One of the most important purposes of your website is to get visitors to complete certain desired actions. Common actions include:
- Filling out a contact form
- Downloading a piece of gated content (usually in exchange for an email address)
- Purchasing a product
- Filling out a survey
- Scheduling a consultation
A well designed website will generally help you entice more people to complete these desired actions – in other words, you’ll increase your conversion rate. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including:
- Strategically placing contact forms in locations where they are more likely to be filled out
- Creating attractive CTA buttons which stand out and draw the reader’s attention to the desired action you’d like them to take when they click the button
- Implementing chatbots to provide a better experience and drive conversions
- Streamlining ecommerce solutions so that they provide an excellent user experience and make it easy for your website visitors to purchase your products
The better you’re able to optimize your website for these conversions, the more likely you are to turn these visitors into customers. While DIY website builders provide the ability to add some of these conversion elements to your website, you have limited control over how they are structured. In addition, certain complex website functionality, particularly if there is an ecommerce element to your website, is difficult to get right when you build a website on your own. Working with an experienced web design agency will ensure these complex functionality elements are designed properly and set you up to maximize conversions.