When it comes to marketing, there is arguably nothing more essential than a well-made website. In fact, your website creates the first impression of your brand for most of its prospective customers. For this reason, a site that is simply “good” just isn’t sufficient any more. The online arena is a highly competitive one in the 21st century, so you need the very best web design to ensure users can be converted into paying customers as well as ambassadors for your brand. Website development isn’t something that just anyone can do. While it’s true that there are plenty of pre-made themes and templates available to allow anybody to create their own website, these are simply insufficient to create the right impression of your company amongst your potential clients. You need to really stand out from the crowd if you want your business to succeed in the modern marketplace, so how can you be differentiated from your competitors? The answer lies in web design that is just as unique as your brand. So, what does a great website really look like? Here are just a few of the features that can make your business site stand out.
Functional And Well-Designed
Your website should reflect your brand, your services and your products. That means it must be professional, polished and visually appealing. What does a well-designed yet functional website look like? It should have white spaces, an uncluttered layout, and high-quality images that allow your brand’s message to come shining through. But that isn’t all. It must also function correctly and speedily, be built to the highest standards, be properly proofread and regularly tested for any issues with functionality or speed. Each page needs to be functional and fast since any one of them may be your potential client’s only impression of your brand. Any area that is poorly constructed, slow or broken will only frustrate your visitors and persuade them to go elsewhere.
User-Friendly
It’s important to be aware that visitors to your website will almost certainly be in a rush. They don’t want to waste time searching out information. They need the details they’re looking for quickly or they’ll simply head to one of your competitors for what they seek. UX (user experience) has a vital role to play when it comes to helping your website visitors to understand, use and remain on the site. This means a logical and obvious navigation system needs to be in place, with visual clues and consistent layouts that ensure functionality site-wide. In simple terms, your website needs to satisfy not only searchers who have arrived at your site looking for something in particular, but also of browsers who are just looking. An onsite search facility will help users to quickly accomplish the jobs they’ve come to do while keeping them fully engaged, minimising dead ends and suggesting relevant content.
Fully Mobile Optimised
In this day and age, there is no excuse for a website not functioning on all platforms. Not only does your business website need to function well and look great on PCs and laptops, it needs to be equally impressive when viewed and used on a mobile device too. More people than ever before are using tablets and smartphones when searching for products and services, so your website needs to be capable of handling those searches and displaying in all its glory on any type or size of screen. Furthermore, full mobile optimisation will push your site higher up the Google rankings – something that is imperative for success.
High Quality, Fresh Content
Your website needs to have an ongoing stream of high-quality, new content on a regular basis. This content must be interesting yet succinct, and must be relevant to your target market. Avoiding acronyms, jargon and corporate speak couldn’t be more important, and since visitors always have a short attention span you need to take care with accuracy, relevancy, and spelling, making sure to update regularly. Social media updates and blogs are perfect ways of adding new content and they keep your visitors coming back for more, boosting your SEO strategy exponentially.
Readily Accessible Location And Contact
Visitors don’t have the time or inclination to chase down your business. That’s why your website needs to make it simple to engage with your company. Offer several different contact points including social media, email, telephone and a webform. All of this should be presented on a simple to find contact page.
Obvious Calls To Action
CTAs or Calls To Action are imperative if your visitors are to take the hint and make a purchase. When websites don’t ask anything from their visitors it’s pretty much guaranteed that those visitors will, in fact, do nothing. Whether you want visitors to read your articles and share them, sign up for your newsletter, become a social media follower or actually buy a product, including calls to action on every page is vital.
Optimisation For Search
Simply having a visually appealing website which is user-friendly isn’t enough – it must earn traffic too or else the effort spent on design, content development and UX will be pointless. To optimise your site for search it must have meta tags and page titles on all pages as well as alt tags for every image. Keywords must be used that align with the words and terms that customers are likely to search for, and must appear in links and content in an organic and appropriate way. Visitors must also be able to share content easily, so sharing links should always be added to drive up traffic volumes and boost your site’s search engine ranking.
Getting Professional Help
Clearly, there’s a lot more to creating an amazing website that meets the eye, and that’s why calling in professional help is such a good idea. Here at Outible, we’re proud to offer a full web design service to suit the needs of your business, so contact us today to learn more and to get started with website development Liverpool, bringing your ideas to life!