Having a great website can make a big difference and is extremely important for your business’s success, especially in 2021. If you have a website for your business, that’s a great first step. But, how do you know if your website is set up for success and, well, great?
It doesn’t take long for a consumer to decide if your website is worth looking at or not. In fact, 75% of consumers base their opinions of a brand or business solely on the website alone. Visitors only need about 10 seconds, to get an overall impression from a website. The main aspects that make up a great website are design, load time, relevant content, and strong optimization.
1. POWERFUL WEBSITE DESIGN
A website with a visually pleasing, aesthetic design is crucial. So important, that 94% of consumers’ first impressions of a business’s website are design-related. Think of design as an avenue to make a great impression on potential consumers; it is your digital handshake and elevator pitch, all in one. A fantastic website design has the potential to boost website conversion rates up to 400%. However, standout design is more than layout and color scheme. For your website to have a great design you need to keep several things in mind when creating a website.
- Have a Clear Purpose: Keep in mind what purpose your website serves for consumers. When building your website, it’s important to understand what exactly your website needs to do. For example, if your purpose is to sell products, then every design decision should be made on the basis that it will further nurture and guide web visitors to buy your product.
- Know Your Audience: Identify who your target audience is and how they will likely navigate through a website. Choosing a specific buyer persona can help you make design decisions such as well-marked navigation buttons, color choice, language, calls to action, and visual content. What is going to stand out or intrigue those visitors the most?
- Consider the ‘Right Style’: Your brand has its own personality and style. Make sure that is reflected on your website. Depending on what products or services your business offers, make sure the information is effectively placed so that the most important content is upfront and accessible. If your business is more product-focused, including more imagery and video content can help to pique interest.
- User Experience is Key: How a person or consumer feels when interacting with your website has a large impact on their overall feeling towards your brand or business. Your website should aim to fulfill the consumer’s needs and provide a positive experience. When a consumer has a great experience using your website, it will make them want to come back. Putting emphasis on the importance of user experience can help your brand gain more loyal customers and define customer journeys. The effects of a bad user experience can be detrimental to your business’s success. A majority of users, 88%, are much less likely to return to a site they have a bad user experience with. Implementing a better user experience strategy can increase your website conversion rates by 400%.
- Talk the Talk: Using the right words is also important to developing the right style for your website. Your word content should engage consumers and inform them in a consistent tone. Color alone can increase brand recognition by 80%. Keeping with a consistent color scheme or palette can help consumers identify your brand more easily.
- High-Quality Content: High-quality content could mean anything from great quality images to copy that is insightful and engaging. When featuring an image on your webpage, make sure it has a high resolution. Images that are blurry or pixelated give off the impression that your website is amateur and/or unprofessional. That’s not the impression you want to give your consumers. Also, make sure your images relate directly to your brand’s message and style.
- Font Choice Matters: Although it may seem like a small visual element of your brand, font matters! When a reader decides to invest time into your website, most of what they’re doing is reading or scanning text. Part of knowing who your audience is and how they access your site should be considered when choosing between thin, bold, sans serif, or traditional fonts.
- Mobile Optimization: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and easily accessible from multiple forms of digital technology. Since about 51% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, it’s pretty important to make sure your website can accommodate those users. It’s so important to consumers that 57% of consumers won’t recommend a website if it doesn't have a mobile-friendly version. Mobile optimized websites allow you to reach more people in a more efficient way More visits naturally means better business; research shows that 68% of companies with mobile-first web design saw an increase in their overall sales.
2. WEBSITE SPEED AND PAGE LOAD
The world is only becoming more fast-paced and so are our expectations. Consumers expect an ideal website load time to be around 1-2 seconds. If the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned. When switching to and from different pages on the site a two-second delay can lead to an abandonment rate of 87%. Slow page loading can also lead consumers to abandon a checkout process as well. Increasing your site’s overall speed and load time can improve user experience and conversion rates. After all, 52% of consumers base business decisions on page load speed. Literally every second counts. There are some great tools that allow you to run free tests on your website and see what adjustments you can make to create a better experience for your visitors. Some of these tools include:
3. UP TO DATE, RELEVANT CONTENT
Keeping your website up to date is important to keeping visitors on your site. 94% of online shoppers don’t trust outdated or poorly designed websites. Your business’s credibility relies on the fact that your website is updated and well designed. Regularly updating the information on your business website is helpful for your consumers and website visitors. Staying on top of trends and frequently updating information on your webpage can build trust between your brand and your consumers. Having updated information can also help your business establish credibility and domain authority. If your website is lacking contact information, 44% of consumers will simply leave your page. Think of this as your reminder to make sure all of your information is relevant and up to date on your webpage, because if it’s not, you may be losing potential customers.
4. POWERFUL OPTIMIZATION
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is how your website is going to be discovered by potential leads. Without an effective SEO strategy, your website will be lost among the masses of online content there is in the world today. Google accounts for more than 92% of the search engine market. So, when creating website content there are some things you should keep in mind when trying to get to the top of the list on Google search because most people don’t go past the first page of search results.
- Great Headings: Headings are important to your website and optimization because headings provide structure. They act as a guide for users as they scan your website, and help search engines organize what each page is about. Your headings should be informative and make the reading easier to understand. The ideal heading length is about 2-7 words. If consumers can’t find what they’re looking for right away, they’ll leave your site and look for the answer to their question somewhere else. High bounce rates are picked up by search engines. The higher your bounce rate is, the more likely the search engine will conclude your website isn’t offering the correct or helpful information to users.
- Meta Descriptions: A meta description, otherwise known as an attribute or tag, should effectively describe and summarize the contents of your site. This is for the benefit of not only users but also for search engines. It plays a big part in on-page SEO. The ideal meta description length is about 275 characters long. They have incredible power to raise the click-through rate of your organic search engine results. Your meta descriptions should be extremely relevant to the content on each page, don’t use the same meta description for the whole site.
- Targeted Keywords: Meta descriptions and targeted keywords go hand in hand. To write meta descriptions that have that power it’s important to use researched, targeted keywords. But, how do you know which keywords hold the most power? First, brainstorm words and overreaching topics that encompass your brand’s website. Try out those words and topics in a keyword research tool. A great resource to check out is this Free Keyword Tool from WordStream.
- Video Content: When you include video content, your website is 53 times more likely to make it to the first page of Google search results. In fact, a quarter of all Google searches have some type of video content included. Including a simple promotional or informational video on your website can increase the odds of your website being found and visited by a substantial amount.
- Blog Content: Including blog content on your business’s website can make a big difference. When you update blog content it can increase traffic by 111%. Combining blog content with a video increases your organic traffic by even more.
All of these aspects are going to make your website the greatest it can be in 2021. The world only becomes more digital - we say that all the time - but it's important to your success that you keep up with the constant changes. We’re here to help!. Having a website with effective design, fast load times, up-to-date content, and an effective optimization strategy will truly make the difference for your business and its website quality.