Not many business owners know this, but you can actually improve your digital marketing strategy by improving your website.
It’s true, most associate digital marketing with SEO, social media, video production, and online advertisements. But, there’s one crucial element that lies behind all of these things and that’s your website. If your website isn’t functional and attractive, you could be negating the positive effects the rest of your strategy has.
If you treat web design with a lot of care and meticulousness, it can actually prop up everything else. Today, we’re going to help you improve your website designs with 6 great tips that will help boost your marketing strategy rather than hold it back.
Your business can’t exist without a great website. It’s time to start taking web design seriously.
1. A Mobile-Responsive Website
More people than ever are performing their searches on mobile devices, so if your site isn’t prepared for mobile traffic, you’re in trouble. Think about your marketing efforts; if you’re pumping money into social media marketing, local SEO, and video advertising, there’s a good chance they’re being consumed on a phone or tablet.
It’s not hard to create a mobile-responsive site. You just have to treat your desktop site and the mobile site as two different entities instead of one general one. Create a mobile version of your desktop site with mobile plugins or convert it into a responsive design.
Google began penalizing sites without mobile-friendly design in 2015, so if you haven’t done this, you’re hurting your SEO.
2. Simple Navigation
Most businesses’ marketing strategy is predicated on using various marketing channels to get more people on to their site. Once there, they can convert those leads into customers with an easy to use, attractive site that makes it easy to find what they’re looking for.
The best websites make it easy for the consumer to find what they’re looking for. Why? Because it’s in your company’s best interest for the website to be simple to look at and easily navigable. The longer it takes to search for a particular page or item on a website, the greater the chances become that the customer will end up leaving.
One of the big trends these days is a fixed navigation bar, where everything is visible with simple drop-down menus. Don’t have more than 6 or 7 menu sections and be as descriptive as possible so the user doesn’t get lost.
3. Social Share Buttons
You would think that including the social share buttons on your site is commonplace, but not every business thinks to do it. It’s important to make people aware of where they can find you and more people are on social media than ever, so you should be using it to your advantage.
If you’re putting a lot of time and money into social media marketing (as you should be), then you should direct the people on your website to follow you there as well. Your socials are a great way to build brand awareness and create a sense of community around your products.
4. Page Speed
If you’ve done your due diligence when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), then you know how important page speed is for your ranking on SERPs. There’s a well-known statistic that says a 2-second (or longer) loading time can result in a nearly 90% abandonment rate.
Fortunately, there are tools available to help you monitor your page loading times. The biggest thing is keeping the bigger design elements on the site to a minimum. That means lots of big picture files and widgets should be used in moderation (even if it is fun to include lots of them).
Most people overcomplicate their sites thinking that it’s helping with navigation or the overall look, but it could be the thing that’s causing customers to leave with items in their cart.
5. Using Color and Image
So, how should the site actually look? We’ve covered how simplicity can help with navigation and thus, customer satisfaction. But, you can still make an attractive website while being considerate of the user experience.
One thing you should be doing is using unique, eye-catching, and high-quality images on your landing pages. When you have great photography on your site, you won’t feel the need to overload your individual pages with huge images that don’t add much.
The other thing is using color the right way. You’ve probably been on websites where you can’t read the text because it blends in with the background colors. Not only is it annoying to look at, but it’s also detrimental to your experience as someone surfing the site.
Playing around with color is important for branding and mood on your website. Just make sure that you’re using complementary colors that bolster your images and text.
6. Call to Action
This isn’t so much an element of design as it is an overall philosophy on how your website should function, but your ability to place calls to action effectively throughout your website is really important for improving your numbers.
You might associate CTA’s with blogging or social media campaigns where you help incorporate private companies in your advertising strategy. By using them effectively on your website, you can direct traffic (so to speak) to different landing pages so that you get the right customers looking at the right things.
It’s really important that your visitors are never at a loss for where to go or what to do next. When they read about a product, there should be an “add to cart” button; when they read a blog post about your services, there should be a link directly to your contact page.
Improve Your Website Designs Today
Don’t rest on your laurels, you should always try to improve your website designs as best you can to keep up in the competitive world of digital advertising. These may not seem like major changes when you look at them individually, but you’ll notice a difference in how effective your marketing strategy is when you implement them.
Your website is your lifeblood as a small business. Do right by it and make sure that it’s bringing new customers in, not driving them away.
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