So you’re a business owner, and you realize that marketing is a fundamental part of your sales funnel. Great! After sitting down to think you end up deciding to hire a salesperson for $30,000 a year plus commission. The thing is, he only works 40 hours a week.
Taking that scenario, how does hiring a 24/7 sales and marketing team do for the same price? The answer, a lot better. Fundamentally, modern day business owners neglect the unprecedented importance of having a great website that is fully optimized to convert views into sales.
When you are working around the clock, your website is your 24/7 salesman that is helping you make money when your sleeping or out enjoying your life.
Unfortunately, however, many business owners underestimate the value of web design and discard its potential entirely. Rightfully so, the possibility of web design is unbounded. As long as if you know what your doing, your website can be one of your greatest assets to your business.
Misconceptions
As human beings, a big part of our sources of information relies on the testimonies of those around us. With all the information nowadays, it’s essential to be to sort the false from what is right. In regards to website design, modern website builders such as webs, Weebly, and Wix have seemingly advertised the aspect of ease when marketing their services and tools.
Majority of these website builders proclaim and often, oversimplify how easy it is to make a website. “Build a website in just 10 minutes!”, “Choose from over 1000 different templates!”, “Make a stunning website at absolutely no cost!”.
These are just some of the ideas circulating when people hear the words, web design.
Truths
The fact of the matter is, however, just as a business owner would take the time to interview and dissect a resume before hiring a sales associate, the same amount of effort and time should be put towards setting up a good website.
The problem with current ads is that it only shows the aesthetic benefit of using a website builder. It doesn’t address the fact that various tricks need to be applied so that people can see the website on the search engine in the first place.
SEO wizard, keyword research, inbound marketing are all critical factors that lead to forming a user-friendly and accessible website.
Another misconception for web design is that often, the purpose of making a website is unclear for some business owners. The purpose of a site is not to be vanilla and watered down a summary of your business; instead, it is meant to be a part of your identity. As humans, we gravitate towards people and are inspired by stories and individual/cohesive achievement.
We cannot feel sympathy or any connection with something that is lifeless. A robust website gives life to a business and if it is done right, should explain your business’s story. This idea has resonated so much with individuals that countless blogs demonstrate the importance of having a story. This is because although facts tell, stories sell.
Looking at the Facts
Similar to any claim it is vital to have the empirical data to back it up and for web designs correlation with sales conversions the case is no different.
Looking at recent statistics, there is no doubt that having a good website is imperative for revenue growth. According to Forbes, the following facts reign true for modern day web design,
91% of online adults use search engines to find information on the web.
93% of searchers never go past the first page, instead of using only the first ten search results to form their impression.
65% of people see online search as the most trusted source of information about people and companies. That’s a higher level of trust than any other online or offline source
“38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive”
It takes 0.05 seconds for visitors/users to form an opinion about your website and determine whether they’re going to stay or leave. So your website’s content and layout have to entice your visitors enough to want to stay on the site and read/ learn more about your products and services.
“88% of online visitors/ consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience.”
This means that your website has to not only create a great first impression by being easy to read, easy to navigate and appealing aesthetically, it also has to entice visitors to stay on your site by almost immediately answering their questions.
“Judgements on a company’s credibility are 75% based on the company’s website design.”
It’s almost 2019, and your website serves as a window into your company, thus it needs to exude trust and credibility. Otherwise, you run the high risk of handing your potential customers over to your competitors with better-designed websites.
“Users spend an average of 5.59 seconds looking at a website’s written content”
This is not a lot of time to soak in all the written content on your website’s homepage.
The key to this is to utilize a concept called “progressive disclosure,” where people aren’t bombarded with content they don’t need right away, but they are still easily able to find it and other information by digging deeper into the website. (i.e. in the main navigation menu)
“70% of small business websites lack a Call to Action (CTA) on their homepage and across their website.”
A great CTA button can direct users, get them to take the desired action, improve conversion rates, and ultimately help your website achieve its defined objectives.
How are visitors/ potential customers supposed to know what actions you want them to take if you don’t give them CTAs that help them better find what they’re looking for, or how to find more information?
How Website Design Becomes an Asset to Business
Although it can cost you a substantial amount of money, investing in a website design can generate an outstanding profit for your business. To ensure that your investment works according to your advantage, you must hire an efficient website designer who is capable of dealing with the following key points in designing a website:
1. Navigation
This is essential especially when your website has so many pages. It basically includes a well-labeled navigation bar or a menu that shows a list of the different web pages. When the website navigation is developed well, users can easily explore and understand your website. It doesn’t need to have a state of the art typefaces. Settle for simple yet intuitive navigation that can make visitors come back for more.
2. Content and Visual Elements
These also include the choice of font and other typographic details. Such aspects of web design should go along together to deliver an accurate message to the audience. In most cases, readers tend to remember the message when it is concise and something that the readers can identify with.
However, overdoing these elements won’t bring any good to your website, Web pages with too much content will look messy and can affect conversion rates. How? Visually clutter pages may be difficult to read, resulting in disinterest in visitors and making them not wanting to come back.
To avoid that from happening, it is best to streamline the content wherein website designers can easily incorporate the text in their design. Moreover, designers are able to add negative or empty spaces that let the readers’ eyes rest in the middle of their reading.
3. Brand Uniformity
Your brand is what sets you apart from your competitors, and it is usually identified through a logo. If your business/company has a unique logo that is placed on all print materials, then all the logo’s elements must be integrated into the website design for the sake of consistency.
It is very important for your target market to recognize your business brand in all types of medium. If for instance, there are slight changes in your brand and visual communication, then it can result in confusion among your customers and make them feel that there is something wrong with your business.
4. Engagement
Web pages should have an exceptional layout so that they can appear more appealing to the users and make them want to engage with your page. It needs to feed people’s eyes because the truth is; this is where every engagement will begin. For this, the need of website design and development is an indispensable factor that should be measured carefully by every website owner.
5. Organization and Search Engine Optimization
Just like how we read a book, it is comfortable to read a web page from left to right, top to bottom. Virtuosi in web designing use the same reading pattern when they’re designing a website. Because most people read starting from the upper left area, designers put the most important information there. It increases the chances of relaying your message to the visitors who can become your customers.
Aside from the organization, utilizing the visible areas for the important website details can also improve the search engine optimization or SEO. This happens when you incorporate business-related keywords in the HTML text. When search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing can crawl into your website, it results in higher search engine placement, which means your website becomes more visible and searchable.
User experience is extremely important
As websites evolve, users will continue to have high expectations for functionality and user experience. Websites like Amazon are focused first and foremost on the customer and the experience visitors have when they are on the site—proving why people continue to return to Amazon.
Prospects want their experience to be seamless, with simple navigation so they are able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. If they get frustrated or confused, it’s easy for them to switch to a competitor’s website where they might have a better experience.
Therefore it’s important that your website design is focused on the customer first, even for B2B companies. Develop buyer personas and determine what your audience is coming to your website to do. Refer to your Google Analytics to see what the most popular pages are and what people want to know. If your website puts the most relevant pages front and center, then your customers and visitors will be satisfied and more likely to return to your site.
Avoid cookie-cutter web design
Anyone can buy a website theme and add their logo and colors to it to make it their own. But the downside to this approach is that your website looks like thousands of other websites—there is no distinction. And there are a lot of hidden limitations with how your website can function that theme developer won’t tell you.
By having a professionally designed website, your company will stand out from the competition. Plus, you can design to have advanced, unique functionality and have the website built to your exact design specifications. You can have the website look and feel exactly how you want; therefore better representing your brand because everything from your logo to content will be well thought out and consistent across all channels.
Content is king, but the design is magnetic
While creating remarkable website content is critical, humans are visual creatures and 90% of information transmitted the brain is visual. Therefore, design matters when it comes to your website. With a custom website, you have the ability to create unique graphics that stand out and support and enhance your content. However, this can be very limited if your company uses a theme.
Design impacts lead generation
In order to convert website visitors into leads, you need well-designed premium content and compelling calls-to-action. By having a custom designed website, your web design can match your calls-to-action to your content so it’s consistent and relevant. Further, your designer can create landing pages for your premium content that match your website to make it a seamless user experience for your audience. This can be hard to do if you go the theme route.
Consensus
As you can see, SEO has become a pivotal part of web design. Being ranked on the first page of Google versus the second page is like the difference between night and day.
This makes it extremely competitive and challenging for small business owners trying to rank to be seen on Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines. When setting up a website you want to hire a trustworthy agency that are specialists in this field.
Knowing the inner works of how search engines work as well as coupling this knowledge with a good website design that utilizes inbound marketing to create value for customers, is what will separate you from your competitors.
When hiring an agency you shouldn’t settle for cheap prices. Although firms might be offering to build a website using most likely (a recyclable template) for $500, often times these websites are not optimized to get you the best results.
What do we charge? We start our web design packages at $3,675 and we will include: Design & customization time, theme, plugins, On-Page SEO (Search Engine Optimization), mobile responsiveness/optimization, lead tracking, Google Analytics from the get-go, professional videos, and photos, as well as any special accommodations requested by our clients. You won’t find this quality at this rate anywhere else!
Verdict
Ultimately, at Sooner Marketing Solutions we don’t just design a website to make it look pretty. Your website needs to be optimized for on-page SEO right from the get-go during the building process. By doing this, your site will be ranked higher than your competitors giving you an edge in the market. We know the tricks and quirks of our trade when building a website.
This means that we know exactly which tools to use to research keywords that people will actually search for. Rather than words that are assumed to be high ranking. Building a website is not about making it look pretty and relying on the chance that you will get noticed.
Creating a website is about taking the steps to ensure that as a business owner, you position yourself to succeed. So if you’re interested in taking your business to the next level contact us today or like our page on Facebook and let us tell your story.
