These days, it’s not enough to just have a functioning website. Your website also needs to be beautiful. Why’s that? For one reason, 75% of users make judgments about a business’s credibility based on visual design alone. A poorly designed website is, unfortunately, an easy way to lose potential customers. As a small business owner, it can seem daunting, and expensive, to undertake a website redesign. But it is one of the biggest things you can do to improve your customer’s experience, increase lead generation, and up your bottom line.
Ask anyone what good design is and, odds are, you will hear similar answers. We may all have different ideas of what is beautiful, but we surprisingly all agree on what makes a good website design.
Users want to be able to USE your website. Research shows that 86% of your website visitors want to see product or service information, 65% look for contact information, and 52% seek an About page for your business. Good website design ensures that users can find what they’re looking for quickly. Good design also alters people’s perceptions of usability. So even if your website is laid out perfectly for your customers, they will not find interacting with it enjoyable if they don’t enjoy looking at it -- and you can start by using easy to read design fonts.
Navigation refers to the way that users get around your website. Website navigation that requires users to actively look for the information they need is a quick way to drive visitors away from your site. Your site’s navigation should be easy to figure out and should lead users to the information they need to purchase your company’s products and/or services.
The content and visual elements of your website are also important. There should be a good balance between text and pictures on your site. Visitors will not want to wade through a site that’s all text, nor will they want to spend time on a site that’s all pictures and no information. Your content should also be easy to read and engaging to keep visitors’ attention.
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Your company will have a brand identity, whether you try and create one or not. Customers will always want to associate your company with something: a color, a feeling, an experience. It’s in your best interest to try and dictate what that is and strong website branding can do just that. While it begins with a logo, branding elements can be pulled throughout your website, like the theme of a book. From color choice to word choice to the images you use, it all can strengthen your brand and the things your customers associate with you.
Once you have a well-designed website, it’s important that people can find it through search. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to that. By incorporating keywords and phrases throughout the text and image descriptions of your website, the crawlers from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others know what your website is selling and can accurately list it in search results.
Once your website is set up to be beautiful and functional, you may be wondering how exactly this redesign is going to improve your business. There are two main areas where you will see a measurable increase: conversion and search engine rankings.
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Good design leads your users to where you want them to go. If you want them to check out your new products, your web design can guide them right to them. If you want to lead them to a lead generating trial offer, good design will highlight it and all of the benefits of the trial. Your web design can be tweaked to highlight special offers, calls to action, and help users identify buttons and clickable elements.
By guiding users where you want them to go, you aren’t leaving anything to chance. You aren’t relying on the strength of your product to spur your visitors to action. Good design will support a strong product by making it easier for visitors to make the decision to purchase because they won’t have to search your site to figure it out. The more time visitors have to spend figuring out how to take the action you want them to, the longer they have to talk themselves out of taking that action.
Your search engine ranking is dependent on more than just how well optimized your site is with regard to SEO. A critical element in Google search rankings is page load speed. A well-designed website won’t be burdened with tons of extra code that slows down the page’s load speed. The same goes for large images. Large images load slower than optimized images, negatively impacting your search engine rankings and user experience.
Research shows that the better a website is ranked, the more visitors they get and the more people trust them as an expert in the field. This is especially true for local searches (searches from people in your area looking for a local business). Local search is a huge profit driver for small businesses and a great search engine ranking will ensure your website is finding the eyes of people ready to buy.
Your website is the most powerful tool in your online toolkit so it’s important to make sure that it is as effective as it can be. That’s where great web design comes in. A great website makes a powerful first impression that can convert visitors to customers. We can help make sure that your website has a sleek, powerful design that enhances your brand and works as hard as you do.
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Thrive Design is a customer-centric web design and development agency from Seattle. Contact us today to find out how we can elevate your business online! Find us on Clutch, UpCity, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Category: Web design seattle
