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With just about every type of business starting up a website today, it’s more critical than ever to make sure your business’s site really stands out to consumers. One of the quickest ways to make a strong first – and lasting – impression that’s sure to attract further clicks is high-quality web design.
Although you might not have given much thought to the design specifics of your company website, many companies today are working with professionals like Higher Images to make sure their websites look their best and attract the target demographic. Whether your site could use a facelift or you’re just starting to build up your first website and want to make sure you knock it out of the park on the first go, here are some of the surprising reasons so many businesses today are trending towards using professional web design – and how it could potentially benefit your website, too.
It’s an unfortunate truth that poor web design can actually drive internet users away from a website. On the flip side, when a site is beautifully designed and the layout is clean, intuitive, and highly user-friendly, it makes it easier for customers to stay, browse, click through the pages, and more. Of course, it goes without saying that the more time spent on a site, the more likely customers are to make a purchase or contact you for your services.
You might not think the design of your website impacts your customer’s perceptions of your professionalism, but as it turns out, first impressions can leave a significant mark. In fact, without a professional-looking website, or with a website that appears too sloppily put together, your customers may, unfortunately, be more inclined to perceive your company as less credible or even less trustworthy. Of course, to avoid this negative perception, many companies are going to the pros for a design that is sure to portray the company as top-notch.
Even if you offer amazing services or products, without a proper website and the inherent marketing value it carries, many potential consumers will never know about them. A truly well-designed website, especially one that works well on different platforms and can be mobile-friendly, effectively makes a company more accessible. Not only does this make the company appear more open, but it can also make customers more likely to find your site from the countless others out there.
With a well-designed website, users can easily find everything they’re looking for without having to try too hard. This is referred to as navigability, and it’s not only a measure of how simple the site is to use but can correlate with the experience your customers will have on the site. If your site frustrates them, they may be left with a bitter taste in their mouth. Companies are making the shift to more easily navigable websites that will instead foster a positive consumer experience.
Nothing makes a site pop and a message stand out quite like top-notch web design. Many companies today are starting to catch on to this realization and are working with professionals to get their sites as polished and ready for presentation as possible. If you’re putting together your company’s first website, or if you think your current site could use a serious revamp, you may want to take note of all the reasons other businesses are paying more attention to professional web design. It could be the tool you need to take your company website to the next level.
You’ve got a brilliant new business, a killer idea the public will love and the best quality service in the industry. So, why aren’t you getting any customers?
Believe it or not, it might be down to a lack of trust. You may think “but I haven’t done anything wrong” and that might well be true. However, earning trust is less about what you do, and more about what you aren’t doing.
This is never more true than on the centerpiece of any modern business, your website. If your website, and more specifically its homepage, doesn’t inspire trust, your business is a non-starter. Let’s explore some ways you can use and adapt your homepage to give your business a trustworthy aura.
Web design is often a case of making sure you’re prioritizing the most crucial elements of your business.
To most online businesses, that means directing visitors towards products, banners highlighting special deals, and video content showing off their services. It also means giving precedence to what people think of your business and its output.
As part of the social proof phenomenon, customer reviews have become one of the primary factors in how consumers make purchase decisions. This is not just the case in e-commerce either. Across numerous industries, consumers are making a point of checking what previous users have thought about the experiences of using products, services, and customer support. In fact, 57% of consumers have admitted they will only shop with retailers with a star rating of 4 or higher.
To take advantage of this new normal you need to make sure your website puts significant prominence on customer feedback, particularly the visuals of a starred review. Online mortgage broker breezeful.com do this particularly well, featuring not just clear star reviews, but images and testimonial copy from satisfied customers and partners. Adding these personal elements gives the star ratings more humanity, giving customers a greater sense of trust in the business.
Project management tool basecamp.com excels here too, subtly placing reviews and quotes above the headline, almost forcing the visitor to read them and be impressed.
Reviews aren’t just an opportunity to brag about how good you are, they’re a chance to give your business place in the real world and use genuine experiences to your advantage in a way brick and mortar stores do every day.
In today’s modern market a business can’t simply have great products and excellent service, it needs to concentrate on how it brands itself.
While social media has emerged as the primary area for brand building, a business’ website, particularly the first impression a homepage gives, is essential to the process. This isn’t just an exercise in self-promotion for profit though — it’s an essential part of earning customer trust and building the legitimacy of your business.
Brand building content means interviews with team members, blogs about social events, and highlighting the charity work you do outside of the office.
While you can’t feature all of this on your homepage, you should look to include snippets of it. That way, even if a visitor doesn’t read the content they’re still getting some of the intended brand building. Social feeds and large visual banners linking to blogs are a great way to naturally work this content into your homepage.
Don’t overstuff your homepage with too much content though, you don’t want to dilute the message. However, a vital trust-building exercise is making sure new visitors are aware of the people behind the virtual business front.
Sometimes, the simplest way is the best way.
When it comes to security, many consumers just want to know you’re getting the basics right. For most businesses, the basics mean a secure and well-built website. It’s amazing what doing these crucial elements right can do for your perception among first-time visitors. Something as simple as HTTPS security can completely transform the perception of your website homepage for new visitors.
You want to try and reduce any lingering suspicion as much as possible. Pixelated, stretched images can make a user question the professionalism of your business. A lack of ‘licensed seller’ seals if you’re trying to move specialist products can make consumers question their legitimacy.
Look at how Ingrammicro’s official UK store lists the major brands they work with along the base of its homepage. It’s professional and the use of logos instantly lets you know you’re in safe hands.
Most importantly of all though, you need to be optimized for mobile. There’s no faster way to push people away from your website on their portable device than not fully-optimizing it for those platforms. A user that lands on a homepage that loads in desktop view for mobile may not think that business is a scam, but they won’t trust them enough to part with money or sensitive details.
If you can balance basic security and technical elements with an inventive homepage design you’re well on your way to a successful website.
One of the worst things you can do with your website is to make it something that disconnects your business from the real world.
Yes, we do operate much more digitally these days, but people still want to be able to imagine a business in a physical setting. You can achieve this by not just including that vital info, but making yourself immediately open and available to contact.
Social media links on your homepage are important for the same reason, letting visitors know you’re reachable on their preferred platform and can be publicly questioned.
For more service-oriented businesses this is a no brainer. Your first objective should be to get people to get in touch with you, so give your phone number and email address pride of place on your website in the same way Apple put their latest iPhone front and center.
Trust is something you have to earn. Consumers have been burned too many times by creative phishing techniques and have an internal checklist they rattle off every time they visit a new website. Make sure you’re hitting the mark.
Whether you are designing graphics for your website or revamping your brand logo, putting a plan in place will help you successfully execute the message you are trying to send across through the design. Creating a perfect graphic design to increase brand awareness is more than just putting together something that looks cool.
If you have an unbreakable graphic design process, the chances of you creating an excellent design will increase tenfold. There are some standard steps to include when creating a graphic design process, but depending on your needs you can tailor them to fit the job you are trying to accomplish.
A graphic design process is a way to describe the different stages of a design project. These steps, or phases, enable you to take your design from an idea to something realized in a finished product. These steps can be broken down into four sub-processes: definition, creation, feedback, and delivery.
The definition phase includes things like determining the creative brief, conducting graphic design research, brainstorming, and creating a mood board. The creation phase involves sketching out a design, then building that design, and putting the finishing touches to it. The feedback phase deals with presenting the product finished product for feedback. Depending on what is discussed, you will then go back and do revisions. Once you have the final product, you deliver it, taking you to the delivery phase.
These steps are transferable to any graphic design project. Let us look more in-depth at the different phases of the graphic design process and what they entail.
This is one of the most important steps in the design process. It is the set of instructions or directions about the project in hand. Without the brief, you do not have any direction, making it difficult to create an effective product. The brief helps you better understand the scope of the project and what is needed. It goes without saying that the brief should include as much information as possible.
If you are taking a stab at accomplishing this yourself, or you are hiring someone else to do it, the brief should include things like your company’s details, brand guidelines, its target audience, what the final product is, the timeline and when deadlines are to hit certain milestones, the budget for the project, what your expect your viewers to do when they see the final product and examples that you want to be emulated through the finished product.
It is important that you go over this with all parties involved, especially if the product is a complex project. You can do this in-person, via video chat, or through online tools that allow you to share with your client.
Conducting graphic design market research is also another important step to better understand your project and its purpose. You want to be sure to gather as much information as possible. This research in accompaniment with your brief will help inform you of the direction your project needs to go in.
Research things like point of differentiation, looking into the competitor’s designs. Find out what works for those designs and what does not. Pay attention to your target audience and what they look at and engage with. Familiarize yourself with what works well in the industry in general. The purpose of doing market research is to measure what your design should and should not look like.
Now is where you can get your creative juices flowing. Now that you know what is needed and the general design direction you should go in, it is time to come up with some ideas. Keep in mind that every element of your design means something. Every element of the design, from the colors, typography, symbols, tagline, and shapes, is sending a message to the viewers. Handle each design element with care. Consider what emotions and thoughts come to mind when looking at certain designs? What is the message of the design?
Keep in mind that you do not have to do the brainstorming alone. It may help when done in a group or with one other person who understands the brief and the market research. Maybe you could do this with the project owner as they might have strong ideas about how the project should look. If you are the project owner, you could tackle this with another team member.
Once you have come up with a few ideas, create a mood board that inspires the visual direction of a project. You can include things like colors, photographs, symbols, and typography. Doing this step will eliminate any frustration that may come when undergoing the creative process.
It is all coming together! Now that you have your project brief, your market research, your mood board and you have now brainstormed ideas for this product, it is time to rise to the occasion and sketch it out. You can either do this the old-fashioned way with pen and paper, or you can go the digital route using a digital sketchpad, Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator. You can even use paint and paintbrushes. This is where your design chops and creativity can really shine.
Make sure you are in communication with all parties involved in this process as you go along. This ensures that all needs are met during the design process. You may have to explain your creative decisions and respectfully fight for them or you may need to concede and make revisions. Either way, it is important to get feedback so that you know whether or not you are hitting the right target.
Once you have feedback, you can successfully move forward with creating an excellent graphic design product that encompasses everything talked about in the brief using elements found during market research, brainstorming, and mood boarding. Having a solid graphic design process is crucial for maximizing your time and eliminating any hiccups or distractions along the way.
If you run a business, your website is probably a big part of it. You may use it to sell products and advertise services or to communicate with your customers and clients, and attract a wider audience. Websites are crucial to modern business, and many operate solely online. If you make money from a blog or e-commerce store, your site might be all of your business, and looking after it may be a full-time job.
Running a website can be tough. You might spend a lot of your time creating content, taking photos, replying to comments or emails, and advertising and sharing your work. You might not always have the time to deal with all of those smaller, behind the scenes tasks. Unfortunately, without committing time to these back of house jobs, your website or blog will never be as good as it should be. Many seem like smaller jobs, but failing to give them time might be holding you back and stopping you from reaching your full potential.
However, thanks to a global pandemic, a lot of us suddenly have a lot more free time, or time stuck at home than we are used to. It could be the perfect time to get stuck into some tasks, which will both keep you busy and improve your website.
Delete Some Old Posts
Running a website, whether it’s a blog or your business, is a steep learning curve. Most of us learn as we go, and it’s common to look back at early content and cringe.
Some of these older posts and pages will be salvageable. You’ll be able to update them, add new information, improve your writing, and insert photos and videos. Others are best just letting go of.
Poor quality content or old, outdated posts bring your site down. They can stop you from being found online and hinder your reputation. So, work through your old posts. Improve where possible and delete any that aren’t worth your time.
If you are currently stuck at home, you may not be able to take photos as freely as you’d like. But, there’s plenty that you can create in your house and garden, and if you look vastly different from any photos of yourself on your site, you could update them. Adding high-quality stock photos can also be a good idea if you have posts that are heavy on text, or with very low-quality images.
SEO is crucial when it comes to getting found by search engines. Good SEO means high placement on SERPS. This doesn’t just increase traffic; it also improves your reputation, boosts conversion, and helps you to become an authority in your field.
But SEO is hard work. It takes a big commitment, and the rules change all of the time, as search engines grow and develop and algorithms change. Get the best SEO services to help if you are struggling or don’t have the time to commit long-term. It can be well worth your while.
When was the last time that you checked your site for broken links? You might think that there’s no need, but broken links can affect your SEO, and they are more common than you might think. Every time someone has left a web address in a comment, and then let their site go, a dead link has been created. You may have created many yourself by deleting content or changing URLs. Spend this time searching for broken links, fixing them where you can, or removing them if you can’t.
If this process has a significant impact on your internal linking strategy, you may also want to look for orphaned posts and add new internal links where necessary.
You might give your stats a cursory glance every now and then, but do you ever make time to study your analytics? Do you look at your demographics? Do you know where your audience comes from, or what their interests are? Are the people visiting your site the people that you are writing for, or do you need to rethink your target audience?
Spend some time learning as much as you can about your viewers and customers. This can give you a fantastic opportunity to create significantly more effective marketing campaigns in the future.
As a small business or blogger, it’s tempting to follow people on social media in the hope that they will follow you back and help you to build a presence. This can work, but it can also mean that you are following countless accounts that bring nothing to your business. Take the time to clean up your feeds, getting rid of dead accounts. This will give you more time to engage with your loyal customers.
Branding has trends, just like anything else. Color schemes become more popular, or they start to look tired and dated. Minimalism is in one day, retro the next. Broadly speaking, if you want to design something that will last, it’s best to avoid trends and be true to your business and its message.
But, that doesn’t mean that it won’t need tweaking occasionally. If your branding is dated, or it no longer speaks for your company or to your audience, make some changes and give your customers time to get used to them before things start to pick up again.
There are plugins for almost everything nowadays. Some are very helpful. They can give you far more control over your site and add functionality. But, we often get drawn in to installing far too many and leaving old, broken, or no longer used plugins on our website. This can be a security risk and slow your site down. Try to condense your plugins by using those with more than one function, and make sure you delete anything that you no longer use or need.
You may have added a profile to your social media feeds and an about me page to your site when you first set it up, but have you updated it since? This is a great time to update images and info on all of your channels.
Your website says a lot about your business and people will make a snap judgment about you as soon as you land on your homepage. That’s a big problem for you if your website looks very amateurish. It is important that your website is easy to navigate and has all of the necessary features, but it also needs to look professional.
If your site looks like the website of a big professional company, that inspires confidence in your customers and they will be more likely to buy your products. But if your site looks like it was made on a shoestring budget and cobbled together in a few days, that gives a bad impression and people will assume that you have the same casual attitude towards things like customer service and product design.
If your website is looking a bit tired and you think that it could do with an update, these are some of the best ways to make it look more professional.
Saving money is always important in business, but there are some areas where you should invest money, and your website is definitely one of them. If you go with the cheapest web designer you can find, the quality of the site will reflect the amount that you pay. You need to shop around and find the best WordPress web developers if you want a professional website that gives the right impression to your customers. Make sure that you check the reviews and look at some of their previous work. It is important that you find a web developer that can create the right tone for your business.
If you look at the websites of big companies, they are all very simple. An overcrowded website that is packed with features does not come off as professional at all, so you need to streamline your site as much as possible. It also makes it very difficult for users to navigate. When you come up with a website design, consider what information and features are essential and cut everything else out.
A slow website screams unprofessional, and it is so frustrating for users. You will never log on to the website of a big company and wait five minutes for the homepage to load, so you need to speed test your site and if it is slow, make some changes to improve loading times. Using a good web designer will help, and so will streamlining the design because you do not have a lot of features to load. If your site is still slow, you may have an issue with your hosting services.
If your website looks the part, users will stick around and start exploring some of the content on there. It is essential that you write compelling content that gives the impression of a professional business. Always take the time to proofread your content as well because spelling and grammar errors give the impression that you don’t really care about the site and your business is very unprofessional.
These are all simple ways that you can make your website look a lot more professional and inspire confidence in your business.
FemFounder is a one-stop shop for creative entrepreneurs and small business owners who need PR, Instagram, Pinterest, and email list building help.
