For years, if someone wanted to find out information about your business, they would ask for your business card or phone number. Today, they will simply ask for your website address. If you’re not online and don’t have some sort of web presence then to millions of active online consumers, you’re pretty much nonexistent.
For years, if someone wanted to find out information about your business, they would ask for your business card or phone number. Today, they will simply ask for your website address. If you’re not online and don’t have some sort of web presence then to millions of active online consumers, you’re pretty much nonexistent.
On the other side of the coin, many business owners are under the impression that having just any old website will do. This kind of thinking is dangerous and can be harmful to your business. In actuality, having a bad website is often worse than not having one at all.
So what are some ways in which good web design can impact your business?
When it comes to the design of your website, first impressions are important. It takes less than a second for visitors to form an opinion about your website and your brand overall.
Great web design not only looks good, but it makes your company look more professional. When a visitor goes to your website and sees that it is designed badly, they’ll either be scared off or start forming opinions about who you are and the kind of services you offer. It’s like going into a restaurant with dirty floors, a hard to read menu, and terrible lighting. It doesn’t matter if the staff is polite and the food is delicious, you’ve already made up your mind about what kind of establishment you’re in. That’s business lost.
The same goes for your website. However, if your business website is designed well, users will find it more appealing to navigate further into other pages. The goal is to keep your audience engaged and on your page for as long as possible. Remember, your website is an extension of you and your business. You wouldn’t send a sloppy salesman to represent your company, right? Invest in good web design and you’ll not only have visitors impressed, but they’ll be coming back to use your services.
Have you ever visited a website and found that it takes forever for the page to load? It’s not only off-putting, it’s frustrating. In fact, one statistic shows that a one-second delay can cause a 7% loss in conversion and 11% fewer page views. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but with millions of users on the internet every day, the numbers add up. If your website is slow, not only will people abandon your site, they won’t return.
Good web design goes beyond aesthetics. Functionality is imperative. You want the bones of your website to be solid and make sure it has a strong functional foundation. From there, you can design a webpage that not only looks beautiful, but also performs well.
In some ways, page speed has a lot to do with how well you rank in today’s top search engines like Google and Bing. Some good SEO practices, like writing alt-tags for images and setting up meta descriptions, are important to improve the ranking of your website. But if you’re not designing your website around such practices, not only will your rankings suffer, your customers won’t be able to find you. Again, that’s business lost. As they say, “the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google.” If your target audience can’t find you easily, what does that say about your credibility?
Optimizing your website to be conversion-focused is probably one of the most important aspects of the initial design phase. If you can’t convert the users who visit your site, you can’t conduct business.
A well-designed website that is optimized for conversions, follows a set of guidelines.
Whether it’s filling out a form, signing up for an email newsletter, or making a purchase, capturing data from your site visitors is a smart practice. Calls-to-action can be easily implemented and provide great insights as to who’s spending time on your site. So before you put just any website out there, make sure it’s designed and built around your business goals.
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