When you’re planning marketing for your company, building a great website may not be your first step. And that’s fair; it’s much more important at first to have a solid concept, enough capital, and a business plan built to survive bumps in the road.
But as you begin to think through marketing and ideal customers, it’s crucial that you consider how to design your webpage. With the huge number of basic designs available on the market, it’s not necessary for a small company to pay for a professional web design, especially not at first. But you do need to have a high-quality, well-designed website that gives your customers a good experience. This can be the difference between your customers staying on your site and buying what they want, or clicking away to the competition.
Why do well-designed websites get better results?
Customers Can Find What They Want
Whether they’re looking for product information, customer reviews, or simply your store’s hours, customers want to be able to find this simply and easily. When your website design clearly points them in the right direction, they’ll be happier and move through your website more smoothly. As Specto Design points out, no website or a mobile app should begin without thinking about the end user first.
You should have your operating hours available on every page and have clear headings for product information, shopping, and reviews (or whatever is applicable to your business).
Not sure if customers can find what they want? Ask them. Get their feedback on your website design and then look for ways to simplify processes and get them what they need to move forward.
Customers Can Research
Modern customers expect to be able to research products before they make a purchase. The best place for them to do this is your website; once they click away, coming back is less likely.
This means that if you get a good review on a website, you should quote it on your site and include a link back to the original. If you have customer testimonials, include them. If you’re selling products directly through your website, make sure that customers can see reviews of specific products on the same page as the product itself.
You can also get a lot of mileage out of videos, either reviews of products or how-to videos.
Customers Won’t Return To A Bad Website
59% of customers won’t return to a website when they have a bad experience – because quite simply, they don’t have to. Unless you are selling an incredibly rare and unique product, customers can get what they want somewhere else. They are happy to do so, if they can get a better experience somewhere else.
There are several details that can make a website feel poorly designed to customers, such as:
- Out of date design
- Multiple pop-ups (or really any pop-ups, despite companies using them again, customers hate them)
- Poor grammar or spelling
- Lack of information about products
- Lack of information about security and privacy
- Lack of clarity about return policies
- Slow load times
- Broken pages within the site
- Autoplaying videos or audio tracks.
Once customers dislike your site, it’s very unlikely that they’ll continue to do business with you. They will feel like there are other companies that can provide what they need, and they’re more likely to work with those other businesses.
Customers Trust Companies With Well-Designed Websites
Customers have a perception of what a well-designed website looks like. That image is regularly evolving, and it’s important to stay on top of customer trends and preferences. Right now, customers want websites that:
- Have important information easily available
- Clearly state what the company does and how it works
- Have in-depth information buried deeper in the website
- Make it easy to communicate with the company
- Offer multiple contact methods
- Use simple, clean design, and
- Have a mobile experience that is as smooth, if not smoother, on a mobile device.
When your website has these elements in play, your company feels more trustworthy to the customer. Customers are more likely to shop with businesses where they know they can make easy returns, where they feel they know the product before the purchase it, and where the company feels like it is well managed and high quality.
Every element of your marketing should be carefully planned out, and building your brand is part of that. Your website should be the headquarters of your brand. It should be smooth, eloquent, and communicate your company’s core values. That doesn’t mean your website has to be boring or sterile! Companies can have creative, exciting designs without creating obnoxious websites that make customers want to click far away.
But as you’re designing your website, make sure to integrate your customer’s user experience, instead of thinking of design and experience as two separate entities. Check in with your customers regularly and find out how the website is working for them. If there are problems or friction points, see what you can do to resolve them.
