Based on a research earlier this 12 months from digital advertising and marketing agency UpCity, about 70% of small companies nationwide have an internet site. If you happen to personal a small enterprise you in all probability 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 newest design traits, then you might lose enterprise. A 2015 survey from advertising and marketing software program supplier Adobe discovered that 38% of individuals will cease participating with an internet site if the content material or structure is unattractive.
Your web site can’t look old-fashioned. It will probably’t be sluggish. It will probably’t be unattractive. So what are the important thing issues you need to be doing?
For starters, your web site should 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 web site simply, or they’ll shortly go elsewhere.
Ross Cohen, the founder and CEO of GetPhound, an internet site design company in Conshohocken, mentioned {that a} “cellular first” design has develop into extraordinarily vital.
“Some companies, notably eating places, for instance, get all their visitors from folks’s telephones,” he mentioned.
Due to the recognition of cellular searching, 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 because of the proliferation of cellular browsers, designers at present prefer to preserve guests on the homepage, scrolling down for extra content material, as a substitute of clicking elsewhere.
“Folks’s consideration spans are restricted to scrolling on their telephones,” mentioned David Kale, who owns an internet site design agency, Kale Design, primarily based in Blue Bell. Due to this, Kale mentioned, the homepage has an infinite influence on a customer’s chance of staying engaged.
“The homepage is so crucial 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 bounce out at a customer asking whether or not they wish to request info, or that mechanically launch movies? Though he thinks they’re typically vital, Cohen typically finds them annoying. He hates it when a pop-up takes up your complete display and the design makes it tough for the consumer to seek out the place to shut it.
Nonetheless, he admits that, if accomplished proper, they may serve a objective. “A minimalistic method is greatest,” Cohen mentioned. “A pop-up with a proposal, a promotion, even an exit pop-up earlier than [users] depart, to maintain them procuring, could 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 the usage of movies considerably will increase the period of time a customer stays on a web site and in the end will increase the frequency of changing a customer right into a lead who provides info or buys a product.
“Movies are a particular candy spot,” he mentioned. “We like placing a video that lasts perhaps a minute to a minute and a half lengthy proper on the homepage. They all the time appear to have a major influence on engagement.”
The colours in your web site are additionally vital. A survey final 12 months from Prime Design Companies, a listing of design, advertising and marketing, and growth corporations from around the globe, discovered that almost 40% of shoppers admire colours essentially the most among the many visible parts on enterprise web sites, with almost half of shoppers (46%) preferring that companies use blue on their web sites.
Cohen likes to advocate darkish, “homey” and “scrumptious” colours — comparable to black and purple — for his restaurant shoppers and white, sanitary-looking designs for medical and dental practices.
“Once I consider a physician, I consider these types of issues,” he mentioned. “If I get on a dentist web page and it’s like black and brown and inexperienced, I’m pondering of, effectively, deteriorating enamel! Colours actually do set an instantaneous tone.”
Good web sites supply plenty of 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 web site is appropriate to Google and different search engine companies, test any hyperlinks in your web site regularly to ensure they don’t seem to be damaged. That goes for hyperlinks to your individual pages and to different web sites.
Your web site must load quick, too. Google offers good insights on web page pace right here.
You’ll wish to be certain that your web site is secured with an SSL (Safe Sockets Layer) Certificates — a digital certificates that authenticates an internet site’s id and allows an encrypted connection in order that customers can have some degree of confidence that their info received’t be stolen.
And though the dominant, scrolling homepage method is common, there’s nonetheless a necessity for stand-alone touchdown pages on an internet site to obtain — after which measure — the visitors out of your internet marketing campaigns.
All of this takes time and persevering with consideration. Cheap web site builders comparable to Wix, GoDaddy and SquareSpace could be useful for some companies with tight budgets, or people who simply want a easy on-line presence. However most established corporations needs to be utilizing an skilled web site designer to watch and constantly replace their web site.
“I feel that enterprise homeowners must 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 can be shedding guests — and enterprise — in any other case.”
Gene Marks is an authorized public accountant and the proprietor of the Marks Group, a expertise and monetary administration consulting agency in Bala Cynwyd.
