Most business owners agree that high-quality web design is essential for their business. But when asked exactly why it’s important, only a few could provide an adequate answer. Web design isn’t all about aesthetics. There’s no use to adding all the bells and whistles to your site if it fails to work toward your goal of attracting customers and increasing sales. The main problem is that many decide to compartmentalize the process, hiring an agency for web design and another one for marketing.
Taking a Comprehensive Approach
The traditional approach of hiring different agencies for various aspects of the website is no longer effective. Instead, it’s better to take a more comprehensive approach. Web design must now be deeply incorporated into your inbound marketing and branding strategy. If you employ three agencies for web design, SEO, and branding, it’s nearly impossible to have them work in cohesion and help you inch closer toward your business goals.
Your Design Matters, and so Does Your Content
As a business owner, you’ll do yourself a favor by building a website that resonates with your target audience. Several studies suggest that online users cite web design elements as among the top factors they consider when deciding whether to trust a website or not. Most users share the same red flags to watch out for including busy layouts, pop-up ads, boring web design, slow page load times, and small print.
Next to these design elements, content is the biggest factors considered by visitors. You’ve probably heard countless times that content is king. However, you need to deliver effective content while engaging the attention of your customers. Doing this through traditional text alone proves challenging. Adding certain design elements to your site can give them more reason to stay and consume your content.
Improving Your Branding Strategy
Each year, Google seems to add more weight to branding in the search algorithm. Always keep in mind that your website should serve as an extension of your brand. If you have a physical store, make sure that the characteristic branding elements remain consistent including the logo, colors, and font. Even your style of communicating with customers should be the same across all online marketing platforms you use. This gives your business more credibility, which could have a huge impact on increasing sales.
Boosting Conversions
All your traffic generation efforts prove useless if you fail to convert that traffic into customers. While it has been the subject of debate for many years, most marketers now agree that web design has a direct correlation with conversion rates. When it comes to web design, you need to focus on three things: navigation, call-to-action, and color scheme.
Be sure that your website is easy to navigate. Make it clear for visitors to reach the pages they want. And once they get to the content they’re looking for, there must be a call-to-action that compels them to convert. This process requires A/B testing to determine the best spots to place your CTAs and what wording works best. Lastly, the color scheme you use can encourage customers to make a purchase without them realizing it. There’s a psychological factor at play here. Simply changing the color of your links can make visitors click more often, which means more opportunities for closing sales.
