Based on a research earlier this 12 months from digital advertising agency UpCity, about 70% of small companies nationwide have a web site. In the event you personal a small enterprise you most likely have one, too. However when was the final time you up to date it?
That is vital, as a result of in case your web site isn’t maintaining with the latest design traits, then it’s possible you’ll lose enterprise. A 2015 survey from advertising software program supplier Adobe discovered that 38% of individuals will cease partaking with a web site if the content material or structure is unattractive.
Your web site can’t look outdated. It may well’t be gradual. It may well’t be unattractive. So what are the important thing issues you ought to be doing?
For starters, your website have to be mobile-friendly. Most guests — notably youthful guests — are getting their content material on their telephones. Guests on these units want to have the ability to learn your website simply, or they are going to rapidly go someplace else.
Ross Cohen, the founder and CEO of GetPhound, a web site design company in Conshohocken, mentioned {that a} “cellular first” design has turn into extraordinarily vital.
“Some companies, notably eating places, for instance, get all their site visitors from folks’s telephones,” he mentioned.
Due to the recognition of cellular looking, homepage design has modified considerably over the previous couple of years. Again within the day, web sites had a homepage with many hyperlinks to different pages. However due to the proliferation of cellular browsers, designers right this moment prefer to preserve guests on the homepage, scrolling down for extra content material, as an alternative of clicking elsewhere.
“Individuals’s consideration spans are restricted to scrolling on their telephones,” mentioned David Kale, who owns a web site design agency, Kale Design, based mostly in Blue Bell. Due to this, Kale mentioned, the homepage has an unlimited affect on a customer’s chance of staying engaged.
“The homepage is so essential to get proper,” mentioned Kale. “That’s the place we spend a number of our design work as a result of we’ve discovered that more often than not folks received’t even go into the positioning. They’ll have a look at the homepage and decide whether or not to contact you or not.”
What about pop-ups, these little bins that leap out at a customer asking whether or not they wish to request data, or that mechanically launch movies? Though he thinks they’re generally vital, Cohen typically finds them annoying. He hates it when a pop-up takes up your complete display screen and the design makes it troublesome for the person to seek out the place to shut it.
Nevertheless, he admits that, if carried out proper, they may serve a objective. “A minimalistic method is finest,” Cohen mentioned. “A pop-up with a suggestion, a promotion, even an exit pop-up earlier than [users] go away, to maintain them procuring, may be good at occasions.”
When Kale designs websites, he prefers to make use of movies on the homepage or in a pop-up. That’s as a result of he, and quite a few research, have discovered that using movies considerably will increase the period of time a customer stays on a website and in the end will increase the frequency of changing a customer right into a lead who gives data or buys a product.
“Movies are a particular candy spot,” he mentioned. “We like placing a video that lasts possibly a minute to a minute and a half lengthy proper on the homepage. They all the time appear to have a big affect on engagement.”
The colours in your website are additionally vital. A survey final 12 months from High Design Corporations, a listing of design, advertising, and improvement corporations from all over the world, discovered that almost 40% of customers respect colours probably the most among the many visible components on enterprise web sites, with practically half of customers (46%) preferring that companies use blue on their web sites.
Cohen likes to advocate darkish, “homey” and “scrumptious” colours — corresponding to black and crimson — for his restaurant shoppers and white, sanitary-looking designs for medical and dental practices.
“After I consider a health care provider, I consider these kinds of issues,” he mentioned. “If I get on a dentist web page and it’s like black and brown and inexperienced, I’m considering of, properly, deteriorating tooth! Colours actually do set a direct tone.”
Good web sites provide numerous probabilities for a customer to take motion, starting from requesting a product brochure to chatting with customer support brokers. Which is why capturing information out of your guests must be a key a part of your web site design.
Good web sites are additionally search-engine-optimized.
To be sure you website is appropriate to Google and different search engine providers, test any hyperlinks in your website steadily to verify they aren’t damaged. That goes for hyperlinks to your individual pages and to different web sites.
Your website must load quick, too. Google offers good insights on web page pace right here.
You’ll wish to ensure your website is secured with an SSL (Safe Sockets Layer) Certificates — a digital certificates that authenticates a web site’s identification and allows an encrypted connection in order that customers can have some stage of confidence that their data received’t be stolen.
And though the dominant, scrolling homepage method is common, there’s nonetheless a necessity for stand-alone touchdown pages on a web site to obtain — after which measure — the site visitors out of your internet advertising campaigns.
All of this takes time and persevering with consideration. Cheap web site builders corresponding to Wix, GoDaddy and SquareSpace may be useful for some companies with tight budgets, or people who simply want a easy on-line presence. However most established corporations ought to be utilizing an skilled web site designer to watch and constantly replace their website.
“I feel that enterprise homeowners have to put it on their calendar as soon as 1 / 4 to have a look at their web site,” Cohen mentioned. “It doesn’t take very lengthy and there’s all the time going to be one thing that must be corrected. You might be dropping guests — and enterprise — in any other case.”
Gene Marks is an authorized public accountant and the proprietor of the Marks Group, a know-how and monetary administration consulting agency in Bala Cynwyd.
