Website design is a major topic at the moment. And so it should be. The design of your website plays a crucial role in your business brand and can be the first contact you have with your potential clients. Flat design and aesthetic minimalism have swept the technological world, especially in phones and tablets that we all have.
And we’re looking to achieve the same thing with our business websites, with the belief that a refreshed look will be all we require to start rolling in fresh customers. In reality, there’s much more than a shiny new website that goes into drawing in visitors and converting them into leads, and then nurturing those leads until they’re ready to become customers. Read more about this here… What is inbound marketing, what does it mean and why should I care?
Website design is one of the first steps to achieving that. Here are a few ways to improve your design by updating some of your website’s features.
Is your website mobile optimised?
Did you know that 95% of mobile searches are for local businesses?
Picture this, you or a friend spills a full glass of red wine on the carpet!! The first thing you’re most likely to do is run to the kitchen to find something to try and mop up the red wine. Secondly or whilst you're running to the kitchen, a friend pulls out their smartphone and searches on Google for 'how to remove red wine from a carpet' and will expect to see a mobile ready website giving them the answer to the question. This is a great opportunity for a business to give advice on what to do in the situation to show the user you're the market leader, plus offer products to the customer that can remove red wine from carpets. This will then stimulate the user to buy your products from your website because you’re giving them high quality advice and showing you’re the market leader.
Ask yourself the question, "does your website optimise for mobile users?" With a responsive website, you’ll be able to reach more people who are actively searching for what you offer. Not only that, but the user experience will greatly improve your lead conversion rates, and contribute greatly to the success of your business. Read more about the benefits of a mobilised website here... 10 Reasons Your Business Needs A Mobile Optimised Website
Your website needs to display the right information
How long do you estimate the concentration span of the common web user is? 30 Seconds? 1 Minute? Quick internet speed has given us a page load concentration span of approximately 3 seconds. If your website takes longer than that to load, you’re missing out on customers.
The speed of your users internet is an influencing factor that you don’t have a lot of control over, but there are things you can do to make your load time faster and more fruitful.
- Remove large and complicated animations
- Removal of outdated plugins
- Streamlining your website page layout and the amount of information on a page
I want to focus on the third point in a little more detail as it is very important when trying to increase conversions. Too much information and detail can impact on how quickly your visitor is going to process the information on your website. An overload of information can overwhelm and scare off a visitor and can make your website look cluttered. If you can restrict the amount of information you have on your homepage to only what is needed for the user to justify staying on your website, you’re going in the right direction. Give them the information they need, in their terms, and you’ll lower the amount of potential customers lost.
Keep your plugins up to date
If your website has elements that require a fitting of extra plugins, you’ll lose visitors as quickly as they arrived. Your online business needs to be accessible to as many people as possible. Keep your elements and add-ons updated and secure. And start replacing Flash with HTML5. The drop of the plugin and its lack of support on an increasing number of devices, determines that websites need to change in order to keep up with demand.
Conclusion
Your business website needs to be user friendly. Visitors need to get to your website instantly, and be able to see and understand the benefit to be gained from your website in a very short space of time. You can help aid this by streamlining your website’s elements and amount of information presented at any one time, as well as staying abreast of latest developments and new technology available to you. This should then give you a great platform to convert more visitors into leads.
