Your website is your online store front and an essential investment. It plays a pivotal role in representing your brand and is a crucial element in your overall sales journey. A good website should ultimately make a great first impression of your business, keep your visitors engaged and prompt them to take action.
There are lots of ways to drive visitors to your website including good SEO, content marketing, PPC advertising, remarketing, and social media marketing to name a few…but what happens once they’re there? All too often businesses are great at getting visitors to their site but not so great at keeping them there. With 55% of visitors spending less than 15 seconds on a website according to Chartbeat, keeping visitors on your site should be a priority.
[gdlr_core_space height=”30px”]Your website is your online store front and an essential investment.
Planning
Often overlooked, the planning stage of your website plays a significant role in your website design process and its overall effectiveness. It enables you to clearly define the purpose of your site, outline its layout, tone of voice, navigation and avoid common mistakes which can cause a high bounce rate.
Planning your website from the end user’s perspective by focusing on what your customers would like to see and what marketing messages and content they respond to, will help you define your tone of voice and create a website that is tailored to your target audience.
[gdlr_core_space height=”40px”]Visuals
[gdlr_core_space height=”30px”]All too often we get too strung up on trying to placate the increasingly demanding and ever-changing algorithms and digital trends (although very important) and end up overlooking the users experience (UX). Your website’s aesthetics ultimately determine whether or not visitors want to use it and discover more about you. Websites that are not very visually pleasing often give the impression that the brand doesn’t care much for the site and therefore must not care much for the product or service that they offer. Good web design that encompasses your brand identity ultimately keeps visitors on your site for longer, giving you more opportunity to gain their trust and ultimately win business.
Responsive web design not only optimises and enhances the end user experience across various devices but also helps your ranking on search engines such as Google. With over 60% of online searches now coming from mobile devices, the benefits of utilising responsive web design are endless!
[gdlr_core_space height=”30px”]Content
Today’s consumers are extremely savvy at finding what they want and will make quick decisions on whether to stay on your website or keep browsing. Your content plays a significant role in visitor engagement and must be clear, concise, consistent and tailored to your target audience. Too much or repetitive information straight away is quite simply a turn off. It’s like going on a first date and telling your date every detail about your life up to this moment! Rather, focusing on relevant and engaging content that does less of the repetitive ‘selling’ and rather communicates relevant and valuable marketing messages that help solve customer issues, establishes trust in your knowledge and brand.
So, keep things interesting enough to spark their interest, without giving everything away. The point is you want them to get to know how great you are and urge them to take action on your website/contact you and move things to second base.
[gdlr_core_space height=”30px”]Content
Having a website that is aesthetically pleasing but one that customers cannot easily navigate around and find out more information about you simply means that your product or service won’t sell. Making a draft sitemap for your website will help to outline its navigation and functionality. A website that is user-friendly and uses call-to-action features throughout invites your customers to get to know more about you and prompts them to take action.
Contact us to find out how we can help you create and/or develop a website that best reflects your brand.
