A Website is an Essential Investment in Your Business

In today's increasingly competitive digital business landscape, having an eye-catching website must be a primary goal for every business. Survival depends upon it. Everyone uses the internet in some form or fashion today, whether on a laptop, tablet, or mobile device. Avoiding this audience can result in underwhelming sales, stagnant customer growth, and eventually closing the doors for good. 

Your website functions as your digital footprint. Normally you only have a few seconds to make an impact and catch your visitor's attention so first impressions are everything.  A creative website with a clean, modern look and easy navigation instantly tells visitors you're professional, organized, and trustworthy. Websites with clear menus allow users to find what they are looking for effortlessly. This keeps customers interested and engaged, leading to loyalty with your brand. The setup should flow seamlessly from page to page like chapters in a novel. On the other hand, a poorly designed website with outdated design elements and confusing layouts creates a negative user experience. Visitors may question your legitimacy or assume you're not invested in keeping your content fresh. Users expect a seamless online experience. If visitors do not get a positive vibe from your website, they will leave immediately and head straight to your competitor. Your website must lead to an efficient and enjoyable user experience. 

A well-designed website allows the user to find the information they need quickly and easily. This means having a superb main page, or landing page. Think of this page as the brain center that connects to all the other pages on your website. The landing page has to be filled with a lot of content and photos to grab the user’s attention. Often a company’s values and history are spelled out. Some businesses may brag about past work or great reviews past customers have left. Accreditations, licensing, partnerships and areas serviced can also be listed there. Many companies will include a click-to-call option where customers can directly connect with your business. Ultimately, the goal of most websites is to convert visitors into paying customers. A well-designed website with a clear call to action entices a customer to move forward with you. Whether it's a prominent "Buy Now" button or a strategically placed signup form, effective methods make it easy for visitors to take the next step and contact you.

Many menus and submenus often will have the available products and services offered.  This is where you can describe in detail what you can offer your customers and how you set yourself apart from the competition. An About Us page allows the user to connect with the specifics of your business and employees. The Contact Us page is where a customer can engage your business by phone, email, or physical address. 

A website must have fast loading speeds. Nobody wants to wait for a site to load. Slow load times will frustrate potential customers and some may never return. Additionally, slow load times hurt your search engine rankings. A well-designed website will have all images and features optimized to allow for a fast and flawless user experience

The look and feel of the website must be captured on the smartphone too. There is a growing trend of more mobile usage in recent years and it won’t be going away anytime soon. A website must have a responsive design to different screen sizes and there has to be a seamless experience no matter how they use your site. A bad mobile experience will lead to customers leaving for good.   

Your website is a powerful tool for establishing your brand identity. The visual elements you choose, from color palettes to fonts and imagery, all contribute to the overall message you want to convey. A cohesive design aesthetic that aligns with your brand voice and values helps visitors connect with your brand on a deeper level.

Finally, a well-designed website should be optimized for search engines. This is where many companies fail. A lot of websites may look amazing and be functional but the public doesn’t know they exist because when somebody does a Google search, they don’t see the website appear in the first few spots on the search results page. If the website is somewhere way down on page 2 or lower in the search results then nobody is going to pay attention. By this point, they have already chosen a competitor or given up. The businesses at the top of the search results get most of the clicks and traffic.  Positions #1 and #2 get 40% and 20% respectively of all clicks for a customer search. 

How do you get your website to rank high in search results? Many factors go into what experts call search engine optimization. It’s a science based on many fundamentals and analytics in web design. In a nutshell, think of it as a popularity contest and you are competing with other rival businesses in your local market to get to the top of the mountain in search. That is why we recommend an expert design your website. A professional web designer will include all relevant parts of SEO to ensure you rank high and outrank your competition. They will make sure keywords are used throughout your content. Keywords are popular words or phrases customers will use in a search engine that you need on your website for you to rank at the top in search results. SEO experts have the tools to determine what these keywords are and how to implement them in your website. Also, an SEO expert will ensure you have plenty of online citations, which are online directories, where the business name, address, and phone number are included. Common citations businesses use are Yelp, Nextdoor, Thumbtack, Yellow Pages, and many more. An SEO specialist will have paid analytics to research how many citations your top competitors are using and will ensure you are on as many of these directories as possible to beat them out. Citations build credibility and relevance with search engines when they can find your business on many different directories. Finally, an SEO specialist will ensure there are backlinks created for your websites. Think of backlinks as a way for other websites to bring you more business. These links on other sites have links back to your website. Often these backlinks are in Yelp or another online directory, a blog, an industry website, or a newspaper or media article. So you may be wondering why is all this important to you. A well-designed website with proper SEO management leads to a high search engine position. A higher ranking in search engines translates to increased organic traffic, which means more potential customers finding their way to your website. More potential customers equate to more possible conversions. More conversions lead to more revenues! 

In conclusion, there are several keys to a successful website. The most important were highlighted here. If you don’t have a website for your business, you are missing out on a significantly higher customer base which means more profits! If you have a website but don’t feel it is pushing the needle much, then you might need some help. 

If you would like to learn more about web design or any of the topics discussed here such as search engine optimization, please feel free to reach out to us at Duncan Digital Designs at 614-300-5718.