Since around 79% of Americans rely on online shopping for their needs, it’s important that your business has a web presence that converts. In fact, since 54% of consumers prefer online sales, this should be a top priority.
Web design can be a challenge for managers and other business leaders. Even if you know what you want, having professional-level tools and knowledge to execute your vision is key to success. Read on to learn some of the ways that hiring an expert for your business website can help your new business flourish.
Improving Website Logistics
Improving the development features of your website is a crucial function that professional web design firms provide. This means handling the backend logistics and ensuring that everything is running smoothly.
One aspect of this is reducing downtime and ensuring that the site is always running. Design experts can track the trends of your normally-functioning website and identify when there is a blip in these trends. They can then examine and troubleshoot the problem to stop the site from going down.
Load Time Optimization
Similarly, website experts will work to keep load times down even when engagement is up. 40% of consumers will click away from your website if it takes over 3 seconds to load, so this is extremely important. You likely don’t have the resources or understanding of the web to monitor load times on your own, making experts an essential part of a business.
70% of your web visitors also are less likely to make a purchase if your load time is slow. This is true even for those who stick around past the 3-second mark. Because desktop sites average over 10 seconds to load, having a quick webpage already sets you ahead of your competitors.
Security Features
When monitoring website trends, design experts can also see when potential threats make their way onto the network. This allows them to understand what’s happening and troubleshoot potential breaches. Since a data breach can cost your business $4.24 million, this is critical if you want to remain in business.
Web development experts will initially place multi-factor authentication features and high-quality firewalls around your website. This proactive and preemptive measure discourages unauthorized users and can automatically filter out spam and malware. We also can quickly drive out existing threats and notify you of what measures we’re taking to fix the problem.
Increasing Audience Engagement
Understanding what consumers want is a surefire way to increase your website engagement. The ability to execute current web design trends and maintain an updated website requires professional assistance.
Since 73% of consumers are more likely to buy something off your site after seeing a video, you’ll need a platform that can sustain this content. You may want to have multiple videos. When combined with product photos and graphics, this means your web platform must sustain a lot of data and be able to load it quickly.
Random templates that you find online aren’t going to cut it. You need expert tools to make this happen. Professionals also understand content placement and can incorporate your videos, graphics, and interactive content into your site in the appropriate places.
Attractive and Eye-Catching Designs
Online trends are always changing. This is because consumers always want to see a site that’s smarter and more engaging than previous designs.
Unfortunately for SMBs, this means that frequent design updates are necessary to remain relevant. Having a website that’s outdated by even a few months will drive users away. They’ll believe that since you don’t care enough to update your web presence, you likely don’t care enough to sell optimized products and services.
Professional web designers can make your site look well-designed and visually engaging in a way that amateurs cannot. We know what layouts people are looking for and will change your page’s colors and design to meet these visions.
Some ways that experts make your design look beautiful include:
- Embedding visual content in a way that makes it load quickly
- Helping you to design graphics
- Making product photos and other visuals pop
- Incorporating the colors that consumers want to see onto your website (blue being the most popular)
- Making sure that your logo and slogan are prominently placed for branding purposes
- Creating a simple navigation system that users understand easily
- Helping you to set up a search function
- Creating a compelling contact form (complete with the lead magnets that you want)
Designers will work with you regularly and continuously communicate to make your vision a reality.
Creating Brand Consistency
Branding is key to making your business memorable in the minds of consumers. This concept refers to the creation of symbols, colors, words, sayings, and slogans that exemplify your brand. People should be able to think of you when they see your brand imagery in an unrelated setting and be reminded of your awesome products and services.
For example, consider a minimalist apple with a bite in it. Then think of the phrase ‘eat fresh.’ You likely didn’t just think of these simple concepts but rather imagined iOS devices and their features as well as delicious Subway sandwiches.
These examples of successful brand imagery are what you want to emulate, and web design professionals can help you to ensure brand consistency.
This means having consistent imagery across all areas of your online presence. All pages within your website will look as though they’re part of your brand. They’ll match up with your social media pages and PPC advertisements.
Additionally, all text-based content will be written in the same voice, especially when you hire digital marketers to create blog posts and related content. This will create a cohesive image of who you are as a brand. Consumers will view you as an entity to connect with, be loyal to, and engage with.
Building Trust With Your Audience
You want your brand to be trustworthy as well as authentic. Professionally-made websites will always look better than those that people in other fields throw together. It’s best to leave your website to the pros and focus on management and product development.
Just as you have the tools to execute these aspects of a business, we have the tools to build a website that looks stunning and stands out from even other professionally-designed pages. This is critical since 42% of consumers cite themselves as ‘very unlikely’ to buy from a poorly-designed website.
This is likely a matter of trust since over 70% of people say that they don’t believe that ugly or outdated websites are reputable. If you want to establish a positive and trusting relationship with your target consumers, expert web design is essential.
Making Marketing Simple
Having a well-designed website is in and of itself a marketing strategy. While you may never have thought about it this way, it’s an essential feature that drives clicks and keeps people interested. Your well-designed site and cohesive brand speak for themselves.
Web design is also an important part of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a term referring to the manipulations that you make to the web both on your webpage and off of it. The goal of SEO is to show Google crawlers that your page is reputable so they push it up in Google search results.
Having a high bounce rate makes these bots question whether or not you provide consumers with real value. Your website- and your products- will be relegated to the lower pages of Google’s results.
Comprehensive SEO Strategies
In general, SEO is important because 90.6% of users don’t ever click past the first page after making a Google search. However, there’s more to SEO than good web design.
On-page SEO strategies refer to alterations that you make to your website itself to make it more appealing to crawlers. Web design is one facet of on-page SEO. However, there are more equally critical aspects including the use of high-volume keywords, internal linking, interactive content use, and engaging and quality web content.
Off-page SEO is the other side of the coin in which a business manipulates other parts of the web to make its site stand out. Some off-page strategies include external links to and from the website, getting good reviews, and having a social media presence.
Web design agencies can assist you with digital marketing. SEO-optimized blog posts will be available to you. You also can take advantage of web development services that embed keywords into HTML codes.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Campaigns
SEM strategies mean bidding on keywords under which to display advertisements on Google Ads. Your professionally-developed visual advertisements will appear on the top of Google or in its sidebar. You can then get clicks that drive traffic to your website.
SEM is awesome because it captures an audience that already is looking for products similar to yours. It also is easy to budget for these campaigns since the ads simply stop when your pre-set budget expires. You don’t need to worry about spending more than you have.
Get Started With Professional Website Design
While creating a website can be a challenge for startups, hiring a professional web designer can expedite and streamline the process. With website design experts you can create a gorgeous page that engages and entices your audience. Here’s a helpful post on choosing the best website design service for your business.
We’re committed to helping your brand pack a punch so that you can get the most sales possible. Contact us with any remaining questions that you have about web design, digital marketing, or related business needs.
