Business website design is a delicate matter for most companies. The scenario often encountered is that you’ve got a great business and performance is good. Your sales are increasing and you aspire to be a leader in your industry in the next few years. Your web design however is truly another story. It’s outdated, unorganized, and difficult to navigate. Employees often make jokes about how bad it is and you cringe at the sight of certain pages. Sure it contains some important information but it’s likely visitors are having a difficult time finding it or reading through it all. Your website features your company logo, contact information, and maybe even a blog you update regularly with industry news. You know however that your website could be much better and often speculate on how a new and modern re-design would dramatically improve conversion. You know your website could also be more effective at engaging visitors and attracting more customers. In fact, an outdated website is not only hurting credibility but impacting conversion.
Over 80% of business websites are outdated and over 60% are not even optimized for tablets or mobile devices. It goes without saying that this represents a terrific opportunity for those businesses that are ready to update. With professional web design agencies everywhere, why not add a modern and high-performing website as yet another advantage over competitors? Fortunately, you are aware of the facts and know that action needs to be taken in order to restore confidence and revitalize your website. Simple changes such as updating the copy or adding new pages to your current website will not solve very much. Your current website does not appropriately represent your brand. It does not convey the right message and it’s causing potential customers to go elsewhere. How many opportunities are you losing daily? It’s a scenario that is quite common and one that web design companies are all too familiar with. It’s time to get expert help and hire a professional web design company for a complete overhaul that includes a redesign and web development. To dramatically improve results and make your business website your most powerful online marketing tool, you need a new website built from scratch.
The following questions will assist your business in evaluating your website as it currently stands.
Is your business website design an extension of your brand?
Your website should represent and communicate your brand effortlessly. It should communicate your company’s purpose within seconds and serve as one of your most powerful marketing tools. The terrific experience and perception a customer has when walking into your physical location should be just as good (if not better) than the experience he/she has when interacting with your website. People will judge your website and your business credibility within a few seconds. And that can mean the difference between closing a deal and losing that client forever to a competitor. Even worse is when you have a website that hurts your brand and causes you to lose credibility. It’s quite difficult to change that perception once it’s firmly planted in the mind of a consumer.
Has your business website design evolved?
A lot has happened over the last few years including the mobile and tablet revolution. New languages such as HTML5 and new techniques such as responsive web design now provide business websites with a serious advantage. Do you ever notice that your website doesn’t show up correctly on iPhone or iPad? Or that certain design elements are missing or that a page is broken? Your potential customers notice too. An optimal viewing experience over these devices is more important than ever. Your website should be easily understood, efficient, and free of errors across all major platforms and devices. This is also where quality assurance testing for your website becomes an invaluable task.
Does your business website design engage?
As a marketing person, you want to receive feedback from customers on how great your web design looks. You want to hear that customers really enjoyed reading a certain article or watching a custom video. In fact, you need to know what elements on your website made a difference in that customer’s mind and became the turning point for deciding to make a purchase. Aside from the fact that the feedback feels good, it’s that very type of feedback that confirms your website is engaging potential customers and fulfilling its intended purpose.
Engagement is that unique interaction that every user has when visiting your website. It’s that personal experience that people enjoy when visiting a website page. It’s what pages they visit, how many pages they visit, and what elements they click on most. It’s how much time they spend reading an article or completing a contact form. Most importantly, engagement is just a hop skip, and jump away from conversion. Some websites fail to engage plain and simple. Such websites are a disservice to both the brand and the business. Engagement is what causes people to start talking, and that is precisely what we want to encourage.
Does your website convert?
A website is an exceptional way to drive highly qualified leads into your office. But too often websites fail to deliver leads or do a poor job on the “qualified” portion of the equation. While your website is just one piece of the puzzle, it’s an enormously important component in the world of conversion. And whether a conversion is an email address, a phone call, or a contact form submission, your web design and web functionality combined play a vital role. There are a number of items that impact conversion. Just using the wrong keywords or having a contact form that is too long or challenging to complete can derail your results quickly. A website that has yet to be optimized for SEO is another way to hurt your conversion. As a business, you know that there are various ways to capture potential customer information, including qualified leads directly from your website. Information collected can be as simple as a name and email or it can be as detailed as a contact form submission with various industry or demographic data. However, carefully guiding your visitors through your website with the end goal of conversion is the key. Monitoring and tracking these conversion-related activities is also important, as you can’t begin to improve these conversion metrics unless you can measure them first. Without tracking your growth or decline, you are unable to track your website’s effectiveness and ROI. For most businesses conversion is what it’s all about. More importantly, without strong conversion, most businesses would be out of business!