When it comes to your business, it’s important to have a high-quality website. Think of your website like your online brand. Just like print advertising or decorating your physical store location, having a well-designed website can help drive engagement, form a good impression, and lead to new prospective customers. Your website should be designed with your target audience in mind, and it should also provide a solid user experience. Don’t worry, we’ll help explain it to you.
Why is a good website design important?
Today, many people prefer online browsing and shopping instead of walking around and being there physically. As a result, having an online presence is important. When people see your website, it’s like they’re perusing your shop. Having a functional, high-quality website can make or break success.
To start, a nice looking, high-quality website shows that you are credible. When you go onto a website, and you can’t find something, there’s no links, or things aren’t centered on the page, would you want to buy from that website? Probably not. There are so many fake websites out there that can try to scam you, and having an ugly website adds to that perception that you are fake. On the other hand, having a well-designed website makes your business feel reliable and trustworthy—and most importantly, real.
Second, good website design boosts your branding. With the wide variety of companies offering similar products to you that you can find online, having a well-designed website increases the chances that people will choose yours. With the right design, you can highlight what makes your business unique from the others and make your business more memorable.
Next, you can get more leads. Leads are individuals that have interacted with your brand with the potential to become a future customer. Having that online platform is a great way to get people to notice you and become interested in your products and services. Display your contact information in an aesthetic and easy-to-find place on your website!
A good website is well-liked by search engines, such as Google or Bing. When a website is well-designed, it is likely to rank higher on results pages, leading more people to find it naturally.
Additionally, having a website can help reduce the number of questions a customer may have. Whenever they may have a question, they can just look it up! This reduces call times, waiting for response times, and also increases visits to your site.
Finally, because high-quality websites are always accessible, you will be able to update them regularly. You can keep customers up to date on the newest deals and offers and share with them key information. This helps with engagement!
With all this in mind, how do you go about creating a high-quality website?
Good Domain Name
- Your domain name is the web address people would type in to get to your website. Each domain name is unique to a specific website. Depending on what your domain name is, it will impact how people find your website and how people perceive you. It basically acts as the first impression of your online presence.
- Having a good domain name makes your website memorable and easy to find. It is usually close to your business’ name. If you have a domain name made up of random letters and numbers, it is hard to find and difficult to remember. It also does not look very professional.
Well-designed and Functional
- Because your website is your business’ online presence, it must reflect your brand. It should match your company colors, be visually appealing, and be streamlined and professional. Layout should be clean and simple, and it should draw the eye to the most important information on your website. Fonts should be consistent, easy-to-read, and clearly visible amongst the background.
- Just as important is functionality. Your website should work correctly—everything links to the right pages, the search bar can find what a customer is looking for, etc—and it should also be tested regularly for speed. Areas with typos, broken links, or slow pages may leave visitors with a poor impression of your business.
Easy to Use
- Because visitors will generally only be on your site for a short while, pay special attention to the user experience. Create obvious and logical ways to navigate the website.
- You will have both “searchers,” people looking for something specific, and “browsers,” people just looking to look. Therefore, it’s good to have a variety of options, like a search bar and also suggesting relevant content, when necessary, on related pages.
Mobile Friendly
- Today, your site must work on any platform: computer, mobile, you name it. Optimizing for mobile will improve user experience and help get your site to show up higher on search engine pages.
Easy to Find Information
- In addition to having a search bar, have your most important information prominently displayed and easy to find. This includes the “About Me” section of your business, so people know what you stand for immediately, as well as the “Contact Me” information. You don’t want to lose potential customers because they are unable to reach you.
Calls to Action
- Place specific calls to action that tell your potential customers what to do. Often, people don’t know what the next step would be, but having a sentence that lets them know will help with conversions. People know exactly what they’re being asked to do, how to do it, and what they will get out of it.
Quality Content
- Have different types of content on your website like blogs, videos, testimonials, and more. If people are going to visit your website, make sure you can keep them engaged, with a variety of pieces that will give them valuable information. You do not want them to feel as if they’ve wasted their time scanning through your website.
- It’s important that you have content that is optimized for your business and remains relevant for your specific target audience, while also having some general information to snag new leads.
Optimized for Search and Sharing
- You should try to get your website to the top of the search engine pages. Some tips include: using page titles and meta tags, optimizing content on the page to align with real words or sentences people typically search for, using keywords, and more.
- You should also make it easy for visitors to share your content with their friends. Peer to peer interaction can be a huge help in driving traffic to your website because people tend to trust the word of their friends.
As you’ve seen, website design is an important aspect of your brand, but it can be very difficult to create. Having a high-quality website with a great user experience can be the key to your successful online presence!