The Internet today requires a digital presence for any business or organization that wants to be “seen” by a wide audience. There simply isn’t an alternative to traditional street presence, paper marketing, or phone contact. Much of what used to be the backbone of traditional contact, the yellow phone book pages, simply don’t exist anymore at all. If a business is not online, it effectively doesn’t exist to the broad public. And that’s a huge marketing problem as well as a sales and operating concern if growth is a priority.
Today, everything people look for starts with an online search. Even more interesting, two out of three people are doing that search with a mobile device versus sitting at a desk with a computer. So, online presence, local brand development for online search, and social networking all matter significantly for driving audiences and, ideally, customers to one’s business and doorstep. Granted, there is still the nostalgia of the main street business storefront, but realistically, most of those retail locations are closing down now and vacant. Again, a digital presence is gold for a growing business today.
Getting Started: 15 Seconds to Shine
A lot can be said about first impressions online. It’s a bit like an initial introduction; people either like what they see or are turned off immediately. There are opportunities to recover later on, but for the masses, first impressions make a critical difference in developing an additional connection or losing an audience altogether. Web design works the same way; if a business site looks juvenile and unprofessional, people assume the business itself operates the same way and they move on. So good design makes a world of difference in holding onto audiences and keeping them long enough to create a connection.
So, what makes a good impression online? Organization and ease of navigation definitely score quick points. People don’t want to struggle to find what they are looking for. At best, one to two clicks are the most they are willing to engage in before becoming annoyed. So, a site needs to pull people in with a good initial visual presentation and then make it easy to get to the “prize” as easily as possible, depending on what the viewer is looking for.
Since that isn’t always known with multiple options, easy navigation makes up the difference. Navigation shouldn’t be cluttered either with lots of banners, hard to use menus or flashing buttons. It should be as intuitive and as easy to understand as knowing the steering wheel directs the motion of a car when sitting in it.
Technical Stuff – Loading Speed is a Common Mistake
If it takes forever for a website to come up with the best connection speeds, imagine what’s going to happen when that website is reached through a slower connection. People aren’t going to wait minutes for a spinning wheel to finish. Optimize a site’s design with small-sized images, lightweight interaction and careful placement of apps. This way, the site doesn’t bog with loading and instead appears and provides access quickly. Save downloads and heavy repositories for optional selections that people can click if they really want to wait. Don’t make it a requirement to see your primary web design.
Test Out the User Experience Before Launching
Any website worth its salt needs to be thoroughly tested, and not by the initial party wanting it. User experience or UX can make or break a site, especially if that experience is negative. And poor experience can happen very easily. A common example is the use of scripts and coding that might work in one browser type but crashes or hangs in another browser. Failing to test a sight for all the major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari) is a sure way to lose some of a business’ audience by incompatible browser interpretation of a site’s coding. Always test first every aspect of a web design before moving to production.
There should also be a feedback loop to catch what an audience on an ongoing basis is finding less than pleasing or irritating. Making changes as things move along is a sure way to garner more attention and return customers to a site that shows improvement.
Mobile Device Compatibility
Along with a standard web design that looks fine on a big screen computer, a site should be responsive to mobile devices as well. This means, depending on the device being used, the site design changes accordingly to provide the best experience for that type of screen. Known as dynamic web design, this approach provides different views and shaping of site information for the most efficient navigation possible. It’s particularly responsive to notepads and cellular screens with smaller displays. Again, this approach is about being as inclusive as possible while also providing a tailored experience for different users.
Brand Development
Every business needs some kind of identifier that audiences see and recognize. Microsoft has its colorbox square, Google has their name logo and Apple has a profile of a bitten apple shape. Whatever the brand or image, a business should be prominently displaying that image and name so that it gets memorized by viewers. This helps with association later on as audiences see the brand elsewhere and know where to go back online to get more information (i.e. the home website).
Credibility and Good Content Delivery
Online now, a name alone is not good enough; a business needs to have social credibility too. This is developed by providing solid and valuable content that is changed regularly and provided for free consumption. Doing so helps drive traffic to the website, develops a following for more content, and the business becomes known for its expertise.
At this point, the business can then launch from the website into social media and online forums, providing more help proactively and driving traffic back to the website through community involvement, goodwill, charity, engagement and conversation building. This circular approach keeps driving traffic back to the website as the business reaches out further and further into its industry audience online.
It’s Time to Integrate
With the above elements in place, now it’s time to integrate the web design with additional tools, ranging from social media to search to multi-media enhancements. The first is search. Generally, a site needs to score well with search engine optimization, or SEO, to be seen in the first two or three pages of search ranking. This is done through more than just term tagging. The site should be embedded with enough content to answer serious questions people have and search for.
So, analytics are used to see the most popular searches for a topic, and then the site design includes sufficient content to provide a valuable answer and terms. This in turn drives up the ranking of the site with SEO. Since audiences change over time, SEO analysis will need to be regular and the site will change accordingly to stay relevant.
Further integration can happen by connecting social media channels to the site through proactive posting and linking, as well as developing backlinking relationships with other sites and influencers who already have heavy traffic themselves and can drive further connections.
Use Metrics Actively
Once a site is developed, produced and active, it’s not time to sit back and rest. Various metrics should be used on an ongoing basis to confirm whether the site has become valuable or is failing in attraction and traffic-building. The first and most simple is traffic measurement via page hits. However, a generic page hit alone is not enough; analysis should also look at where people click when they arrive. This data can be collected and provides big insight into what is popular on a web design and what is being ignored. Obviously, then, things should be changed to increase traffic, and those things that they ignore should be removed, optimized, or rethought.
Bring in Expertise if Needed
There is no shame in hiring help when dealing with a critical need and not having the skills to build it properly. Anyone can code a simple HTML page. It takes experience, skill and practice to design a functional digital portal for your business that is responsive, easy to work with digitally, and provides a great experience when visiting. Instead of struggling with a high learning curve to produce the same, bring the consulting expertise like InSync Media on board to set up the initial design and platform.
There is plenty to learn as it occurs, and the start can really help a business put a first digital foot forward correctly with its audience. From there, site management can then develop organically as in-house personnel become used to and learn how to manage and improve the site on an ongoing basis.
Good web design isn’t magic nor is it rocket science requiring a PhD to accomplish, but it is an art that takes time to master. Set your business up right, and the world will pave a highway to your doorway online. Do it wrong, and you become part of the digital fog.
