Having and maintaining a website is one of the minimum requirements to keep a business afloat in this day and age. For small businesses, starting a website requires a lot of logistical preparation—web design and development is not a cheap investment, especially if it’s not carefully thought and well-planned before and design or development takes place.
A bit of thought and careful planning can give you the most out of the money you’re shelling out for a digital marketing agency or freelancer, especially when it comes to design. Your web design, which many shrug off as mere aesthetics, affects your website greatly, particularly how your customers perceive your business, how they navigate to find information and get in touch with you, and how they go from site viewers to paying customers.
To ensure the best results for your website, here are four basic web design tips to remember when your agency or freelancer is working on the design.
Keep your audience in mind
The most important thing to remember is to always have your target audience in mind with each step. No matter what stage in the buying process a customer is, they should be able to understand your product and be able to navigate your website properly. While many think that providing tons of information and technical jargon would make them sound like experts, it won’t make a sale if your customers don’t understand what you’re saying.
Also, while aesthetics and innovative design is a definite plus, it will backfire if your customer has a hard time navigating through your website. Simple and straightforward designs usually make for the best user experiences (UX), so try to adapt it to your design.
The most important of all web design tips: make sure it’s mobile-optimized
One of the basic duties of your web design agency is to ensure that your website is mobile optimized. The majority of a person’s free time is spent with their mobile devices in hand, which increases the likelihood that your website will be accessed through a mobile platform. In fact, as of July 2019, Google officially enabled mobile-first indexing for their search engine algorithm — basically meaning that the usability, speed, and many other factors are decided by your website’s mobile experience before desktop.
Poorly optimized websites won’t load properly on their devices, inevitably resulting in poor UX. Taking that extra step won’t only ensure that your website is visitable, it also helps keep your visitors inside your website longer.
Update with quality content
Content is the heart of your website—without it, your customers won’t be enticed to visit. Having constant quality content uploaded on your website will have your customers flocking in, especially if you’ve established a solid follower-base.
Through regular updates, not only will your consumers be updated to recent news regarding your products, but it will also convince search engines that your website is still active and running. This inevitably improves your search engine rankings, as search engines prefer active websites that produce “new” content.
Immediately display your contact information
This is one of the most commonly overlooked web design tips. A majority of business websites tend to forget to input their contact information within easy reach. Dedicating a page solely to this would definitely help, utilizing a page and integrating it with Google Maps adds for a nice touch (and great for your Local SEO). You can also create location-based landing pages if you have multiple branches, this way you can utilize it with geofencing technology for even better, search engine optimization.
Conclusion
Keeping these four basic web design tips in mind will definitely jumpstart your small business in the online world. The best results always arrive due to excellent help, so taking on a professional digital marketing agency will drastically improve your website.
Are you looking for an excellent web design company in Brantford, ON (also servicing surrounding areas from Oakville to Cambridge to Simcoe to Woodstock), to help your small business reach the top? At Oake Marketing, I utilize over 10-years of expertise in digital marketing, design, and web development to guide your business to the highest reaches. Get in touch with me today and see what services best suit you.
