Are visitors able to determine what your company does within five seconds of landing on your website? Can users easily navigate to different areas of your site as they desire? How is your bounce rate? If answering these questions makes you sweat or you simply don’t know the answers, it’s time to take a hard look at your website design.
A website won’t succeed simply by excelling in isolated aspects. It needs to have a comprehensive design that increases your website's user experience, functionality, and appropriately complements your content. It’s important that your site is first and foremost addressing the core concerns of your audience. Below, you’ll find some tips to make sure you aren’t turning visitors away but, instead, are headed in the right direction with your website design efforts.
Ensure Intuitive Navigation
There's nothing more frustrating than a site with a disorganized or confusing navigation interface. When designing your website, navigation is key, because it is the map that displays the core places users can visit. A lean navbar will include characteristics such as streamlined content, navigation hierarchy, and responsive design, so the experience doesn't drastically change on mobile. If users cannot find what they're looking for, they have no reason to stay on your site. Instead, they will certainly bounce and find a competitor that offers a better user experience.
Nothing Wrong with Scrolling
Don't worry if you’ve designed a slightly longer homepage. The concept of placing “important” content above the fold is an old one that stems from the days before mobile devices. Your home page should include 3-5 sections that help direct new and recurring users to relevant sections of your site to help create a seamless experience. Some of those sections might include a value proposition, an overview of your services, an “About Us” section, or client testimonials. Depending on your niche industry, you may want your home page to include an introductory video as well.
Include Social Share and Follow Buttons
Providing your website visitors with the opportunity to share what you have is just as important as producing great content and offers. This is why it is imperative to include social share and follow buttons on every page of your website. Social sharing buttons are the small buttons that are around the top or bottom of blog posts. They contain icons of different social media websites and allow you to share the page directly on the social media channel of your choice. These buttons act as an unimposing tool that simply encourages social sharing from your buyer personas.
Calls to Action
Traffic on your website is fabulous but if they don’t know what pages to look at or which actions to take, they might just leave, never to return. Featuring eye-catching call to action buttons with compelling copy is one of many ways to communicate to visitors the next step they should take. These buttons are an easy way to guide users through your website.
Add call to action buttons that lead consumers to a landing page or materials that will educate them and help solve their pain points. Once they identify your company as one that provides value-added materials, they will feel more comfortable researching your services to see if these solutions can become part of their reality.
For more information on this topic, see our articles:
Make Things Click – Call to Action Tips for Any Business
Use Relevant Images
Images help tell your brand’s story and can subconsciously influence consumer purchasing decisions. People are used to and appreciate seeing products prior to purchase and almost 70% of online buyers say images are influential in their online purchasing decisions. (We discuss this topic in full in our article: The Impact of Images.)
Many businesses overwhelm their website with extremely stocky photos. Remember that just because a stock website has the image, that doesn’t mean it looks authentic. Nor will it evoke trust in your brand. Ideally, you want to use photos that portray images of the real people that work at your company and in authentic work environments. If real photographs aren’t an option, you can use stock photos. Be sure that the ones you choose match who you are and what your content is explaining.
Utilize White Space
Also referred to as negative space, white space refers to the areas around elements on a page that are lacking content or visual items. Whitespace is an essential design element that helps break up a page and increase readability. This extra space helps views prioritize content on a given page. It also plays an important role in the design process and positioning of website design elements.
The effective use of white space to create a reader-friendly layout is not a new concept. The newer trend is to use white space as a focal point or to make a statement all on its own. This contrasting use of white space as an independent design element will continue to add to the aesthetics of web pages. As you look to integrate more white space into your design, make sure content is properly grouped so users are able to distinguish where they belong on the page.
Mobile Optimization
Google began heavily favoring mobile-friendly websites after it updated its ranking algorithm in April 2015. The search engine giant then started indexing mobile sites in March 2018. The focus on mobile will continue to grow and brands that have yet to improve their mobile experience will find themselves falling behind in search rankings. It goes without saying that your site to fit the needs and wants of your visitors. If your website is lagging on its mobile optimization, check out these resources:
What You Need to Know About the Mobile Version of Your Website
Mobile Marketing Developments and Trends
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You want a website that can be found which means you need to develop a strong SEO strategy. The ever-learning, ever-shifting algorithms of search engines like Google and Yelp require businesses to regularly reevaluate their keyword strategies in order to remain relevant and continue growing their brands. The increasing use of mobile devices and voice search will influence how we optimize websites for search engine ranking. Advances in artificial intelligence will continue to impact keyword research and the growing popularity of Amazon as a search engine will also have an effect on SEO best practices.
Successful search engine marketing campaigns are built upon strong keyword strategies. Brand keyword strategy should include the selection of high-performing keywords that will drive traffic to your website. Don’t get sidetracked with the endless content possibilities you could rank for. Identify the proper keywords first that your audience is actually searching for so you aren't attracting too many visitors who'd never convert to your product, let alone your offers.
Identify Broken Links and Other Issues
Take the time to evaluate whether or not your site has broken pages. Depending on the size of your website, or how long it’s been around, you may actually have a few pages or links here and there that aren’t working and visitors rarely let you know that is the case. Nothing will increase your bounce rates like broken links, buttons, or any other features that might not work the way you originally intended it to. Yes, this means going through your site, page by page, to check for missing text, poor-quality images, incorrect information, and themes or plugins that you need to update or fix. Every page needs to make an impression – for the right reasons.
The experts at Strategy Driven Marketing have extensive experience in the development and creation of engaging websites for organizations of all sizes and across a number of industries. We understand the important role a website plays for any brand and would love to learn more about your business so we can help you offer an effective and engaging website that will let you maximize your revenue potential. Contact us today to get started!