It’s no secret that to stay competitive in today’s technology-based environment, businesses need to be able to successfully market themselves online. To this end, the importance of maintaining a high-quality web presence cannot be overstated. In today’s environment, a business’ online persona has the power to make or break its success. The New Year is the perfect opportunity to reevaluate the effectiveness of your business’ web presence. The most important aspect of a business’ web presence is its website. If your business hasn’t been growing at the rate you’d like, it may be time to redesign your company’s website.
Your company’s website is the first thing consumers will see when they go online to search for your business. Their initial impression of your website will inform their first impression of your business.
Consumers report that they view a company’s website as a reflection of the company itself. A sloppy or out-of-date website tells consumers that a business doesn’t care about their customers, is behind the times, or is incapable of keeping up in the competitive and fast-moving nature of the online market. A well designed, up-to-date website, on the other hand, enhances expectations about how professional and effective a business will be at delivering products and services.
Successful web design is about more than a website’s “look.” Of course, the look of a website is important. Layout, fonts, graphics, and colors all contribute to the consumer’s first impression of the page, which will affect whether they take the time to explore the website further or click away to find a different business with a more appealing webpage. However, the ultimate goal of effective web design is to enhance the overall growth and success of a business. Before redesigning your website, you should consider several other factors crucial to quality web design, including: simplicity, readability, usability and navigability, and clarity of purpose.
Simplicity: Websites that are over-cluttered with images and text are confusing for consumers. It is easy for important things to get lost in an overcrowded webpage. Furthermore, websites packed with images, videos, and text load more slowly. If a consumer has to wait more than ten seconds for your website to load, they will give up and go to a different site.
Readability: Your website will not be effective if customers can’t read it. It’s important to choose clear and easy-to-read fonts, make the font sizes large enough for people to read text without squinting or straining, and to place text on backgrounds that facilitate reading.
Usability and navigability: It’s essential that your website be easy to navigate so that customers can quickly find what they’re looking for and without difficulty. If they have to spend too much time searching your website, they will give up and go to a competitor’s page instead.
Clarity of purpose: In growing your business, it’s not enough just to get people to visit your website. Once they’re there, it’s important that your website gets them to do what it was intended to do (or a call-to-action feature), whether making sales, recruiting new subscribers to a service, or providing information. If it’s not clear to visitors what they’re supposed to do, your website is ineffective and has little value. Thus, it is very important that you hire a professional web design firm to custom build smart call-to-action features for your website.
When designing a website, it is too easy for businesses to forget how highly consumers value the judgments they make based on initial impressions of a company’s website. Consumers consider your website as an indication of professionalism. Regardless of the quality of the actual products and services, a poor website design will make a business look highly unprofessional.
Customers confronted with a poorly designed webpage will quickly leave to seek products or services elsewhere. For your website to be an asset to your business, it is crucial that it portray your business in its best light. Otherwise your website risks doing more harm than good. To establish a professional web presence for your business, contact our Minneapolis web design company today at [email protected] or (612) 590-8080.
