In accordance with a research earlier this yr from digital advertising agency UpCity, about 70% of small companies nationwide have an internet site. For those who personal a small enterprise you in all probability have one, too. However when was the final time you up to date it?
That is necessary, as a result of in case your web site isn’t maintaining with the newest design traits, then chances are you’ll lose enterprise. A 2015 survey from advertising software program supplier Adobe discovered that 38% of individuals will cease partaking with an internet site if the content material or format is unattractive.
Your web site can’t look outdated. It could possibly’t be sluggish. It could possibly’t be unattractive. So what are the important thing issues you ought to be doing?
For starters, your website should be mobile-friendly. Most guests — significantly 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’ll shortly go some other place.
Ross Cohen, the founder and CEO of GetPhound, an internet site design company in Conshohocken, mentioned {that a} “cellular first” design has change into extraordinarily necessary.
“Some companies, significantly eating places, for instance, get all their site visitors from folks’s telephones,” he mentioned.
Due to the recognition of cellular shopping, homepage design has modified considerably over the previous few 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 at the moment wish to maintain guests on the homepage, scrolling down for extra content material, as a substitute of clicking elsewhere.
“Individuals’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 unlimited affect on a customer’s chance of staying engaged.
“The homepage is so vital to get proper,” mentioned Kale. “That’s the place we spend lots of our design work as a result of we’ve discovered that more often than not folks gained’t even go into the location. They’ll have a look at the homepage and decide whether or not to contact you or not.”
What about pop-ups, these little packing containers that leap out at a customer asking whether or not they wish to request info, or that mechanically launch movies? Though he thinks they’re typically necessary, Cohen usually finds them annoying. He hates it when a pop-up takes up all the display and the design makes it troublesome for the consumer to search out the place to shut it.
Nevertheless, he admits that, if carried out proper, they might serve a objective. “A minimalistic method is finest,” Cohen mentioned. “A pop-up with a proposal, a promotion, even an exit pop-up earlier than [users] go away, to maintain them purchasing, may be good at instances.”
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 presents info 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 at all times appear to have a big affect on engagement.”
The colours in your website are additionally necessary. A survey final yr from High Design Corporations, a listing of design, advertising, and improvement firms from world wide, discovered that just about 40% of customers recognize colours probably the most among the many visible parts on enterprise web sites, with almost half of customers (46%) preferring that companies use blue on their web sites.
Cohen likes to suggest darkish, “homey” and “scrumptious” colours — resembling black and pink — 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 enamel! Colours actually do set a direct tone.”
Good web sites provide 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 knowledge out of your guests must be a key a part of your web site design.
Good web sites are additionally search-engine-optimized.
To ensure you website is appropriate to Google and different search engine companies, test any hyperlinks in your website continuously to ensure 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 velocity right here.
You’ll wish to ensure your website 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 gained’t be stolen.
And though the dominant, scrolling homepage method is well-liked, there’s nonetheless a necessity for stand-alone touchdown pages on an internet 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 resembling 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 firms ought to be utilizing an skilled web site designer to observe and constantly replace their website.
“I believe that enterprise house owners must put it on their calendar as soon as 1 / 4 to take a look at their web site,” Cohen mentioned. “It doesn’t take very lengthy and there’s at all times going to be one thing that must be corrected. You would be dropping guests — and enterprise — in any other case.”
Gene Marks is a licensed public accountant and the proprietor of the Marks Group, a expertise and monetary administration consulting agency in Bala Cynwyd.
