While you may find that you fixate on the website design initially, you must always consider the look of your site alongside the overall user experience at design and development stage.
When working with a web designer take a collaborative approach, have your ideas for the website appearance, but be open to tips about website structure and navigation that will come from years of experience.
Here we provide three areas of focus that will help you create a winning website whether it’s a new site or you’re embarking on updating your current website.
1. Understand your website user
Your web content needs to be of interest to your target audience. A website today is not just about nice pictures and text, it’s much more than a brochure site. It’s a place where you want to send all web traffic, whether from links on social posts, online advertising or guest blogs. So, you need engaging content to keep visitors on your website. You can only do this by understanding the challenges and demands that your clients and prospects are facing to ensure that your content gives them answers to their questions.
Whether you’re selling products or services, help them to find information and pricing simply. We understand that in some sectors, such as accounting, it may not be a one size fits all approach to pricing as services are tailored to each client. However, a call to action offering a free consultation to discuss requirements can be helpful. But, where you can list baseline prices such as ‘starting from’, this can help push that initial engagement.
Your content marketing strategy should include regular writing for your website for a blog/news page. We work a lot with professional services firms such as accountants and this is such a key area to always contribute to as it helps with website optimisation your position in organic search engine results pages (SERPs).
Video content towards the top of the page is also an engaging way to keep a visitor on your site. But again, the content is key and needs to be focussed to your audience.
Read our blog about creating an online persona for your business as this will help you with tailoring content specifically for your audience.
2. Ease of navigation
Once you get people to your website, it needs to be a smooth journey for them to move from page to page. Having a website that is easy to navigate will help people stay on your website for longer and give more chance of a sale.
Have a look at your website and check the menu and homepage, are you covering the questions that your target audience will ask? Is it easy for them to find contact details and get in touch with you? Is your menu offering the right options and is it clear?
Ensure you have bold call to actions and white space that can lead the visitor simply around the page – avoid too much clutter.
If you’ve written a blog add in internal links to relevant pages that can help further guide a visitor to other pages of interest.
3. Be mobile responsive
Globally 52% of web traffic comes from a mobile. This will only increase as the world conducts more transactions online and uses search on their mobile. If your website isn’t already mobile friendly, then now is the time to look for a new website design. If you are already mobile friendly, then always check how updates look on your mobile. As you constantly add blogs, new call to actions of pop up boxes, taking a quick look to that it functions correctly will help the user experience and prevent people from moving quickly from your website.
Website designer Croydon
Smart Cow is a web design company in Croydon. We build bespoke websites for accountants and local businesses which are search engine optimised. We offer a free website audit which can highlight areas that need improvement and guide you on what to update.
We also provide a suite of digital marketing services including social media management, PPC, email marketing and ongoing SEO. Book a free consultation to discuss our website design services and online marketing.