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Some businesses create a website that is attractive, eye-catching and even interesting in different ways. However, your website should also be designed with the needs of your target audience in mind. This is a marketing tool that may be the main initial contact that your customers have with the company. They may create a solid and even lasting impression about your company based on your website.
More than that, the website may even be the only form of contact that your customers have with your business throughout the entire sales process. With this in mind, it is important to understand how your website affects your marketing efforts.
Conversion Rates
The primary goal of any website design strategy should be to bolster the conversion rate. You understandably need to drive leads to the website, but you need your website to inspire visitors to take the appropriate steps to make a purchase, fill out a form or take other desired action.
You will need to track your conversion rate on your existing website to determine if design changes are needed. In some cases, simple changes related to improving the layout, making actionable items more pronounced or updating visual elements can result in a much higher conversion rate. When optimizing your website for conversions, make sure to pay special attention to:
Clean Navigation
Your website should be designed with easy navigation in mind. Your visitors should be able to very clearly and quickly determine which links they want to click on to take them to a desired page. When a page is slow to load or when navigation links are not clear and easy to find, visitors may become frustrated and leave the page. The best website design combines attractive features with a clean, simple design that inspires customers to take action.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are the first pages that your customers visit when they arrive at your website after clicking on an online marketing call-to-action. They must captivate your audience and provide them with the right incentive to take a desired action, such as filling out a form, downloading your Ebook or registering for your webinar.
Credibility
One of the factors that visitors will pay attention to when they visit your website for the first time is credibility. Does your website indicate that you are an expert or authority in your industry? Does it inspire trust or other emotions that are relevant to your brand? Credibility may be brought to live through your logo, the colors and font used on the page, and even links to external associations or relevant organizations.
Website Content
Content marketing is increasingly popular so it’s important that you execute it effectively. Your content should be relevant to your audience but it should also be engaging. For example, using text alone is not enough to capture the attention of your readers. By adding certain design elements to your content, such as graphics, images and videos, your potential customers may decide to stay longer on your website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization enables your target audience to more easily find your website when specific keywords or phrases are searched for. Ideally, your website will rank in the top three results in Google for your targeted keywords and phrases. Here are the most important website design elements that affect your search engine rankings:
Responsive Design
Many Internet users are browsing the web from a handheld device, such as a tablet or a smartphone. Your website should have a responsive design that makes the content look just as great on a smaller screen as it does on a larger screen. This means that all aspects of the design, including the content and call to action should be easily located in a responsive design.
Site Loading Speed
There are multiple factors that can slow down the loading speed of your website. This includes a graphics-heavy page or a slow server. Google recommends site speed below 2 or 3 seconds. Remember that your visitors can easily get frustrated if the page does not load immediately. Many will simply click off the page rather than wait for it to load, and many of these people will not try to return to your page again.
Site Structure
Your site structure is critical as well, and this is an area that many inexperienced designers struggle with. Your meta descriptions, tags and other elements should be SEO oriented. You should avoid using sneaky redirects, stuffing your website with keywords or using hidden text in an attempt to bolster rankings. Search engines may ding your website ranking as a result. You also should avoid duplicate content on your website. Consider using canonical tags to create uniqueness for each page that is seemingly similar.
Branding
Each aspect of your website should make a positive step toward defining your brand uniquely. The images, graphics and other elements on the website will reflect your company’s core values. It may also inspire a certain emotional experience that is unique to your brand.
All aspects of the website should tie into the brand image, and they should not work against it. When you confuse your customers through your design, you may erase much of the branding efforts that you have made up to this point.
While it is easy to overlook the importance of creating an effective website design that is based on using this platform as a marketing tool, you can see that it actually plays into your marketing efforts heavily. You can test and track results for various design element changes in order to determine which elements are most effective for your overall goals.
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