An effective website is the center of your online presence and can help you reach more people. But what is an effective website exactly? An effective website has great web design that attracts and influences visitors and increases conversions. Many businesses ignore their web design (either due to lack of understanding or resources) and lose prospective customers. Do you know that 42% of people leave a website because of its poor functionality, aka bad design? With first impressions being 94% design-related, good website design is no longer an option, it is a necessity. This article will discuss the 4 pillars of a great web design and how to incorporate them into your website.
1. Understand the Role of a Website in Your Marketing Strategy
A website can be required to play a variety of roles in your online marketing efforts. It might be required to sell products or services. Its purpose could be to educate and inform your visitors. It might also be supporting your branding efforts in non-digital spaces. Whatever the role your website has in your business, your website’s design should reflect and support those goals.
A good web design must create a great impression, and inspire confidence and trust. It should also help nurture your leads to improve conversions. Understanding and defining the role of your website in your digital marketing strategy is the most important step you can take to ensure online success. According to Forrester research, a well-conceived and frictionless design could result in up to 400% conversion rate, who doesn’t want 400% more business!
It is equally important to understand your market and typical buyer as well. What would convince a site visitor to become your customer? Would it be informational content, pictures of your products, or reviews from previous customers? Are your website visitors searching your website from a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop? What’s your ideal client’s preferred way to interact with you, email, chatbot, zoom? What’s the market’s preferred way to request and pay for your services? What nuanced approach are competitors raking for online success? Considering all these facts, optimize your web design for maximum conversions.
2. Create the Appropriate Content for Your Website
According to research, Google receives around 3 billion searches and the top-ranking search result gets 25% of all the clicks.
What makes a website rank higher in search engine results?
It’s high-quality content. Many businesses miss out on a huge number of website visitors by lacking the right kind of content. Good content provides value by solving the problems of the people and answering their questions.
A well-defined SEO strategy and relevant content are the backbones of your web design. Plan and create your web content to support your marketing strategy and business goals in a way that aligns with the needs of your customers. A service-based business might need to create content that elaborates on how they solve a particular problem of their clients. You may be required to create blog posts that address common faqs, or technical specifications specific to your service and products. Your content could focus on comparing and contrasting your services with those of your competitors. You might also post extensive profiles of your employees to prove that your organization is an expert on a particular subject.
Similarly, E-commerce websites must contain product information and guide the consumer through the checkout process. Attorney, surgeon, or consultant websites may begin by educating a potential lead and then directing them to a form that collects their contact information or initiates a phone conversation. A blog can help keep your website current and may even serve as the basis for an email newsletter to stay in touch with your customers.
Your website’s content may be written by an in-house copywriter, a contracted writer, or a member of your team. Either way, you need to make sure that your web content is optimized to ensure it’s in line with how users search for related content in search engines like Google. If your content is being generated in-house, you can engage an SEO service to create a Blog Strategy for your team to follow (vs guessing at what could be the best content).
3. Use Design to Highlight Your Content
Various design elements can greatly improve the presentation of the content. A website truly excels if it has a design that complements the content strategy. According to 2018 research by Adobe, 73% of companies invest in design to stand out. A website redesign, done by professionals, greatly increases customer engagement and conversions.
Great design traditionally refers to Form and Function, this is true for web design as well. A good web design will be technically functional (optimized) so the site displays beautifully on any device including phones and tablets. According to Google, 40% of people search only on a mobile phone on an average day whereas, 74% of users are more likely to return to mobile-friendly websites. Responsive design is a norm now.
When thinking about ‘form’, good visual design can also improve the functionality and user experience of your website. A web designer can use the principles of design like contrast, balance, white space, typography, color, grid, and alignment to create a website that is aesthetically pleasing and optimizes the user experience. In the NSDS blog, we differentiate our tips and techniques from information through slightly different font sizes and a hashtag #nsdsprotip.
Another important element of design is the visual content. If you run a service-based business, the professional photos of your team on your website can greatly help in branding. These images can humanize your brand and encourage customer loyalty. While stock photography makes generic photos widely available, custom photography allows for extreme customization.
If you run an e-commerce store, the images of your products can greatly improve sales. An image enhances the product description and makes it appealing for the visitors of your e-commerce store.
Finally, visual content can also help in your SEO endeavors. It engages your website visitors, reduces the bounce rate, and increases on-page time. Similarly, if you optimize the visual content with the right keywords and share it across social media channels, it can help in increasing your organic reach and getting you more backlinks.
4. Choose a Great Web Hosting and Technology for your Website
Good web hosting is an undeniable ingredient of improved web performance. Superior web performance results in better speed, greater involvement of the visitors, successful SEO strategy, and increased efficiency of the site. Although it might add to your website’s cost, it results in better website security and exceptional technical support.
Website speed greatly influences user experience and search engine optimization efforts. According to a Hubspot study, the probability of bounce increases by 32% as page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds. Similarly, the highest e-commerce conversion rates occur on pages with load times between 0 to 2 seconds. Faster websites also rank higher on Google search results. Site speed is one of the signals used by Google’s algorithm to rank pages. Slow page speed means search engines crawl fewer pages that could negatively impact indexation.
Good web hosting also ensures data protection through several layers of security. This way, your online business remains safe. Another advantage of a great web hosting company is superior customer service. In case you run into any technical issues, the support services of your web hosting company can solve your queries and provide solutions quickly and effectively. The support service can also ensure that the server hardware and software are seamless to integrate. This way the users can get uninterrupted service.
One of the most important priorities of your business is to make profits. Good web hosting can help you do that by ensuring a safe, effective, and hassle-free website.
Increase Conversion Rates with Great Website Design
Your website design plays a vital role in creating a positive first impression. Imagine walking into a store that is messy, unattractive, and disorganized. You wouldn’t like to buy from such a shop, right? Similarly, a poor web design drives your potential customers away. If you want to achieve the best results for your business, you must invest in designing a website that encourages people to learn more about your business and convert.
Request a Free SEO Audit via email and we’ll send you an easy-to-read report. We’ll help you pinpoint which on-page and off-site factors are influencing your site’s performance. Connect with your (or our) web design professionals to discuss the results and learn how to improve your website’s performance.
At NSDS, we have a decade of experience designing websites for clinics, trade services, professional coaches, non-profits, and other service-based businesses. Contact us today and we can assist you in growing your business online!
