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Tips to improve website design

06/01/202105/19/2020 by scmarketing

Your website is the centre of your digital world. All digital marketing activity should be focussed on pushing traffic back to your website. Your web design therefore should be attractive to your target audience. The aim is to keep your visitors on your website for longer, providing them with the information you know they want to read about.

Improving your web design can help the user experience of your website and therefore in turn generate more quality leads as visitors sign up for newsletters, download ebooks and request a consultation. All this activity helps you to engage down the line with prospects that are interested to hear from you thus making this a successful inbound marketing strategy.

With this in mind, here’s some top tips to help you with your web design to encourage engagement from quality leads.

White space

Don’t just pack your website with reams information. Be selective, make every word count. Think of how you feel when bombarded with lots of content. It takes the appeal away of staying on the website and browsing further as you try desperately to take on board what it’s saying.

Think of how much calmer you feel when you see space around paragraphs and images. It keeps you focussed. The headings start to stand out along with the calls to action which are enticing you to do something.

Headlines that include keywords

As a website designer and content manager, you’ll often hear us talk about keywords to optimise your website. Your headings on your website are perhaps the most important places for your keywords.

By now you will have created your online buyer persona. In doing so you will know what your target audience is looking for. Therefore, this is the information you need to weave into your headlines. It’s not just about making the design of your headings stand out on the page, it’s also about the content.

If you need help with creating an online buyer persona, read our blog for more information.

Bold calls to action

A good Call to Action (CTA) helps a user navigate a website. Bold and clear actions will entice your visitors to stay on your site longer and ‘take action’.

Read our blog for further top tips for calls to actions.

Add bullet points

Your content should be tailored for your target audience. Provide them with answers to the challenges they’re facing. Make their experience of your website as personal as possible. Ensure your products and services answer their needs.

So why are we including content within web design? What’s key, once again, is making content easy to read. While you need to ensure you have all the vital information showing on the web page, the layout needs to be easy to read. Add bullet points and breakdown lengthy paragraphs. Separate with images to make it attractive. But don’t forget the all-important calls to actions. This is something that a web design agency can help you with at design stage.

Be consistent

Continue your website theme throughout the design of your website. All pages need to be consistent. Similar imagery, same font (size and style), colours and an easy to navigate menu. Visitors will warm to the consistency and it can help keep people on the site for longer as they easily search for what they need.

Web design Croydon

This had been a very quick overview of some of the key things to consider when embarking on a website design or redesign.

If you need help with updates for your website or require a new content managed (CMS) web design such as WordPress websites, then get in touch with us. We’re a WordPress design company in Croydon providing web design for accountants and businesses in the Croydon area and London as well as digital marketing services including Search Engine Optimisation for ongoing website optimisation to improve online presence and visibility in local search.

Once a web design proposal is agreed, we will work on the theme and provide you with a wireframe. This means you can see the look and feel of your new site in advance so that you can make tweaks before it is built.

Website design and development resources

10 useful tips on websites for accountants

01/30/202302/18/2020 by scmarketing

This post provides 10 crucial tips to look at for websites for accountants.

Your website is in effect your brochure for your prospects and existing clients. It should be appealing to not only attract but engage visitors to keep them viewing pages on your website for as long as possible.

For an accounting firm, clear and bold call to actions with simple messaging and an easy to navigate menu is a solid foundation to build your website on.

Top tips for your website

If you’re looking for a new website to be designed and developed to help grow your business as part of a holistic inbound marketing campaign, here’s our top website tips for an accountancy firm to consider.

Build your website with a good CMS: You need a good framework to build your website on. These days that means using Content Management Systems (CMS). Once the website is designed and developed, it enables easy upload of information so that content updates can be managed inhouse.
Simple and engaging content: Review all your collateral and decide what you’ll use on the website and what needs to be cut out. For an accountancy firm, think about the services you offer and provide clear, precise information about each. If you think of who your target client is and what they are looking for in an accountancy practice, then write content that speaks to them. Make sure that your URL for these pages says exactly what’s being talked about on the page as this help with SEO to help your site become fully optimised for the search engines. So, if you’re talking about Corporation Tax or Self-employment tax, name the website page just that.
Easy website navigation: During the design build stage pay a lot of attention to the menu and site map, think about the layout and whether it’s relevant and easy to navigate. You want visitors to find things quickly to help reduce the bounce rate and to keep them looking through your website for longer.
Call to action: It’s not just about a clear menu, but it’s also about adding clear call to action buttons. These are often used for inbound marketing campaigns to drive visitors to: ‘download useful HMRC forms’; ‘sign up to a newsletter’; ‘book a consultation’.
Imagery: This forms part of your content too. It makes the web sites more engaging and easier on the eye. But don’t forget to upload the right size as too large and this could impact on the speed of your website loading. You will also need to make sure that the imagery is mobile responsive so provide a great user experience whatever the platform.
Is a blog relevant for an accountancy firm? Absolutely! Don’t be fooled by the influencer lifestyle type blogs and social media feeds you so often see. A blog is vital for a business website to be seen in organic google search and ultimatley being a lead generator for your firm. Why? Because it provides a dedicated space for uploading fresh content regularly. This keeps the website up to date and engaging for prospects, current clients and also the search engines. The one job of a search engine is to get the best result for the person searching for a particular term. Therefore, providing content with helpful tips, advice and links, will help you rise in the search rankings and help make it a lead generating website.
Be targeted: For an accountancy firm, while you want a professional feel, as that’s what people will expect, you also need to make sure that the website design and content reflects your accountancy firms brand and appeals to your target audience. We call this the persona – a made up stereotypical client. So, this is where a blog page can allow you to create specific content which answers the challenges of your audience.
Optimise your website: Any agency you work with will tell you about Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags and H1/H2 headings. A web designer can provide you with simple training on this once your website has been developed. Or you can engage a digital marketing agency to manage this for you moving forward. This means they can keep an eye on your keywords for you. But this is for another blog…you can read more about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) here.
Be a disruptor: When it comes to AI this is the buzz word of the day in the accounting world. Recent reports from EY has revealed that 77% of respondents say that AI is expected to turn into an essential business driver across the financial services industry (Transforming Paradigms: A Global AI in Financial Services Survey). Therefore, if your firm is creating a new website, then should you be incorporating AI functionality? A simple chatbot is a great way to start, before embarking on an integrated CRM system for your practice.
Back up your website: Most CMS websites provide modules to allow you to back up and to make safe against hackers. Unfortunately, it’s an everyday occurrence around the world where thousands of web robots (automated programs) check thousands of websites a second for weaknesses to exploit the owner. Do what you can to make it safe. A digital marketing agency that designs websites will usually incorporate regular backs ups into their ongoing management fee, so make sure you ask about this when you look to engage a web developer.

Stand out with your website

If you can get all this working yourself, then you will be off to a great start. Smart Cow is a digital agency for accountants so, if you’re in need of a web designer for accountants and web development book a consultation with us.

Digital marketing resources:

The user experience of a website is fundamental to growth

05/03/202409/10/2019 by scmarketing

Have you ever wondered why customers leave their shopping cart without completing? Or only visit your homepage without clicking through to other pages? This could all be down to the user experience: how easy it is to navigate; how relevant and; how up to date the content is. Sounds simple, but if you don’t get it right it can easily impact on sales and business growth.

We’ve gathered together some top tips on what to consider if you’re embarking on a website update or totally new design.

Looking good

It goes without saying that your website needs to look good. It needs to reflect your brand, be image led and enticing to potential and existing customers. But it’s not all about looks. We’ve previously spoken about developing a target persona for your brand and ensuring that your website takes into account your target audience with appropriate keywords, phrases and imagery!

Ultimately you want to speak in the same language as your customers do and get across why your services or products are right for them. It’s also worth noting that you want to solve their problems so think about how your product and services can do this.

Easy to navigate

So, you may have got people to visit your website, but you need to keep them there and you haven’t got long to make an impression. If someone can’t find what they want in 3 seconds, especially if they’ve come to you because of a well worded social media post or Pay Per Click Campaign, you will lose them. Websites need to be basic and simple and if you’ve said in a marketing campaign to ‘click here’ about a certain product or service, then a customer wants to see exactly that.

Make sure you have very clear call to action buttons and arrows to draw the eye to areas of the website. Bold and contrasting colours can also help with navigation.

Bounce rate

If you’ve failed the 3 second rule, then customers are likely to ‘bounce’ off your website. When we start working with clients, we do an analysis of their website which tells us the current bounce rate – we then work with you to tailor messaging so that this rate lowers over time and converts. But you will find it hard to tailor messaging if you haven’t done the process of creating a target persona. Read our blog on how you should develop this persona for your business.

The Path Forward

The relationship between a well-designed website and business growth is unequivocal. Enhancing user experience is an investment in your brand’s future, necessitating a thoughtful approach to design, content, and technology. If the prospect of undertaking a user experience redesign seems daunting, professional assistance can provide the expertise needed to transform your website into a potent tool for engagement and conversion.

We encourage all businesses to critically assess their online presence and consider the profound benefits of prioritising user experience. The potential rewards, in terms of customer satisfaction and business growth, are truly limitless.