Let’s face it: no consumer is making a decision without consulting a company’s website. People buy consumer items, cars, trips, and even shop for apartments online, and as more and more potential clients make decisions based on their online experience, the look, feel, usability, and accessibility of your website is fast becoming the most important investment you can make in your brand’s growth — especially if you find yourself in a competitive market. A customer (or potential customer) will base many decisions on user experience, so it pays to team up with a seasoned digital marketer to help you build the best website possible — with all the amenities that 2016 customers crave.
According to the experts at Digital Clicks Marketing, having the right understanding of your website’s role is one of the single best ways to keep your brand viable online. Think of your website as the first and foremost member of your sales team — much in the way you wouldn’t send out an unkempt or unseasoned salesperson to represent your brand, neither should you offer up a bland or unremarkable website. If you’d like to see how a professionally designed website can function, stop by Digitalclicksmarketing.com/web-design-serivces/ and explore the options available to businesses. Digital marketers suggest that a company should upgrade or overhaul its website every few years, especially if your brand has changed recently. Consider a website redesign if:
- You’ve recently added major services or products
- Your target market has significantly changed, expanded or tightened
- Your competition has created branding stronger than yours
- Your company doesn’t rank well on the SERP on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo
NEW TRENDS DOMINATE
If your current website is not responsive, you should consider the potential downside to this. In 2015 alone, the percentage of website traffic on mobile devices has seen a 78% increase which means that website design should be putting mobile access first. The marketing team at Digital Clicks explains that responsive design is now the go-to, so expect flat design to dominate — decreasing loaf times by keeping image files smaller. Google, for example, recently flattened its logo by removing the bevels and adopting a cleaner, sans-serif font to make it more flat (losing the bevels) and changed the font. This reduced the size of the logo file used on a number of sites by more than half and Google also discovered that it was easier to read on smaller devices.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION IS KEY
With over 650 million websites, and another 51 million being added every year, there is no shortage of competition in any sector. Experts agree that being on the first page of a Google search is vital to continued growth — and to fend of stagnation or obsolescence.
Savvy digital marketers will use Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) to help your website rank well when appropriate keywords appear in user searches or in social media sharing. Be aware that much of the SEO work is done during the website build phase, so be sure to consult with your web designers early during the process.
Remember, in a lot of ways, your website is your business card, so you should be doing your best to make sure it looks sleek, functions well, and reflects your company’s goals clearly and efficiently.