Website Design

Website design comprises more than creating a beautiful brochure; it must be intuitive, easy to use and serve your audience. People visit a website with a purpose, needing to make a decision, solve a problem or to learn something. Focusing in on these goals, as the basis of Structure and Presentation strategies, ensures you are building a website that meets their needs. Understanding why someone visits your site is critical to the overall user experience. 

An effective content strategy should share relevant stories that relate an audience’s situation and helps them find a solution. “Sell a good night’s sleep – not the mattress.” 

A visually appealing, polished and professional website clearly demonstrates that a business is legitimate and cares about its brand image and reputation. A simple and sleek design with clear visual hierarchy, an inviting color palette and attractive typography has proven long lasting and allows users to more easily navigate your content to find what is important to them.

Design for usability and functionality that strategically influences user flow. If your audience cannot quickly reach their goal, it won’t matter how great the site looks, they will look elsewhere. Every element on a page must have a distinct purpose and improve the experience or it makes achieving the objective that much more difficult. Poor design is not only cumbersome, it reflects negatively on your brand and even makes people less likely to trust you without knowing why.

Start every website project with a Responsive (mobile-first) strategy as its guiding principle. More than half of your traffic potential depends on it.

The importance of having a mobile friendly website cannot be overstated. A website that is not responsive is at a great disadvantage in today’s marketplace.

People shop when and where it is most convenient and over 50% of those visits are on a mobile device. Providing the majority of your visitors with a positive browsing experience can make the difference between making a sale or losing the prospect to someone who serves them better.

Your rank in a Google search result will also improve with a mobile friendly site since Google boosts the rank of mobile sites over those designed for desktop only. They call this approach “mobile-first” indexing, where the Google crawler acts as a mobile device and evaluates your website as such. By rewarding sites that are mobile-friendly, Google is effectively penalizing those that are not, making responsive web design an important factor of the Optimization strategy.

An Optimization strategy is essential in realizing three key success factors; driving traffic, building trust and improving conversions. A variety of optimization techniques must be layered together to deliver effective results. Each one playing a part in the greater experience.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content Marketing are the driving forces behind earning a good ranking and reputation with search engines like Google and Bing. Users trust search engines and having a presence in the top positions for the keywords being searched increases that website’s potential for a visit. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors that will complete a business goal, a conversion, such as calling, buying products, downloading content, submitting a lead form, or signing up for a newsletter. Traffic is good. Traffic that converts is better.

Connecting with customers is most effective when you understand how people search, who they are, their cultural and social differences, how they speak and what type of imagery resonates with them. Designing a website with these qualities in mind improves your chances of being found by new people and subsequently converting them into leads or new customers.

An optimized website is the only marketing channel that can drive traffic for years without ongoing costs or effort. Traffic to content that ranks for the right keywords can snowball over time, whereas paid advertising needs continuous funding to drive traffic.

Website performance is measured by more than page speed alone. Speed plays a huge role in your success, but ease of use plays an equal part in the overall experience. People visit a site with a purpose and judge a site’s performance by how long it took to complete their objective, from the first click to the last.

Optimizing a site for speed with techniques like image size reduction, caching, plugins and partnering with a quality hosting partner is easy. How simple a site is to navigate is where more attention is needed, especially in large volume websites. Effective website architecture helps visitors to naturally gravitate to the most relevant section, regardless of their point of entry. The number of clicks needed to navigate through content and find what they need matters a great deal. Specific end-goal paths must be at the core of every effective architecture strategy.

We’re living in the age of data, when facts and figures are worth as much as any currency. It is important to understand why visitors come to a site and what content they consume during their visits. Whether your website is a storefront, an informational site, or a combination of both, every business needs to have a strong Intelligence strategy to connect the dots that work and identify any trouble points in the visitor journey. Only then can you be certain that you are offering the quickest path to completing their objectives.

Tracking important data about your visitors and the sources that lead them to you, provides the ability to watch for trends, improvement opportunities and problems. It provides a foundation for website optimizations, marketing campaigns and predictive analytics to help businesses succeed in the modern marketplace.

Offering the right product to the right customer on the right channel at the right time are key drivers to success in the modern marketplace. If web analytics is not part of your business strategy there’s really no way of knowing whether you’re moving closer to your goal or further away from it.

People buy from brands they trust. We have all been at the crossroads of buying from an unknown brand and asked ourselves; is this business legitimate, safe and trustworthy?

A website provides an opportunity to reduce uncertainty by offering a professional representation of your business, social proofs like reviews and answers to the most common questions about your products or services.

Putting your best effort into your website is as important as the care you put into your physical location – for the same reasons. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Make it a great one.