Nowadays, having a simple online presence isn’t enough for any business. Your website is the backbone of your digital marketing efforts, and it needs to be optimised for maximum effect. Today’s customer demographics are more tech-savvy than ever before, and they want to learn about your brand, products, and services through your website. It should come as no surprise that website design and optimisation have become critical elements of digital strategies.
If you want to maximise the effect of your business website and bring in more customers, there are certain steps you need to take. Here are a few of the most important ones to help you get started.
Work on mobile responsiveness
In today’s digital marketing climate, mobile has become a top priority for website designers. People are using their phones to shop more than ever before. It’s a convenient way to do research about specific products that customers are looking to purchase as soon as possible. When they’re outside of their homes and want to find a particular product or service, they can get on their phones and find what they need immediately.
Because of this, a good business website needs to focus on mobile optimisation and responsiveness. A poorly-optimised website will be skipped over in favour of a better one. Not to mention, Google has started to place extra emphasis on mobile optimisation for rankings in recent years.
There’s no uniform way to focus on mobile optimisation, but there are certain steps you can take to improve it. For starters, you should make sure that the website can operate well on screens of all sizes since mobile screens tend to differ in this regard. Elements should display appropriately on these screens without issues. Images and text should be legible without forcing the user to zoom in or adjust their screens. Similarly, links must be easy to select and open without getting tangled up in other links on a page.
The good news is that most DIY website builders allow you to introduce mobile responsive design choices. Now, optimising for mobile users and creating an SEO plan is a bit trickier and might require a professional touch.
Stick to modern design trends
While creativity and uniqueness are desirable traits for modern websites, they’re not always a good thing. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to website design. Some things just work, and sticking to effective trends can mean the difference between good and bad search engine rankings.
A good example of a modern website design trend is white space. Your intuition may tell you that putting as much information as possible on a page is a good idea, but that’s not always the case. People need to take a break when absorbing information from your website, even if it’s a tiny break. This is where white space comes in. It’s used after blocks of texts, significant links, and pieces of relevant content. It allows users to focus on key elements of your pages without getting overwhelmed with information.
Simple contact forms are just as important. If you require information from your users, you shouldn’t make the process of giving this information too tedious. Ask for the bare minimum necessary for your goals and don’t go overboard on the text boxes. Simple Yes/No button placements can make it much easier for users to give information, even though they’re not always the best option. Weigh your options for every question that you give users and see where you can cut the amount of text or the number of text boxes required.
Use clear CTAs
A call to action is one of the most important prompts on your website. It directs site visitors to take a specific action, whether it’s to make a purchase, do additional research, subscribe to your newsletter, or sign up for a service. In most cases, a call to action, or CTA, comes in the form of a single button. Good CTA design and placement is crucial if you want visitors to actually perform the action.
A good rule of thumb for CTAs is to have them spell out the action clearly and explicitly. This way, you remove any ambiguity regarding what the button does. Clear examples include CTAs like “Sign Up,” “Learn More,” “Get Started” etc.
While you may be tempted to place the CTA at the end of a convincing piece of content, this isn’t always necessary. Consider placing it at the top of your homepage as well as most other pages. Plenty of visitors will already be familiar with your brand to an extent, and they might just need a CTA to convert. Others will keep that CTA in mind as they take in your content and offers on the page, so you won’t lose anything by keeping it at the top.
Incorporate good SEO practices
Search engine optimisation is the backbone of any effective digital marketing strategy. You want search engines to recognise your website as an authority on a subject, and using good SEO strategies is the way to go to achieve this. As search engines evolve to better recognise relevant pages and content, SEO trends and practices change with every year. Keeping up with these trends can be challenging, but it’s essential if you want to have the top website in your industry.
One of the most notable trends for SEO in recent years is a focus on local markets. People that want to make a quick purchase or subscription are more likely to check out local options rather than global ones. This is especially true if they’re looking to go out and buy something in person. Optimising for local SEO requires extensive keyword research and personalised advertising, and that can be difficult for many businesses to execute. The good news is that there are many agencies that offer local SEO services for businesses. No matter the size of your company, you’ll need proper optimisation practices to put your website at the top of search engine results pages. A third-party agency can make this goal much easier to attain, and you won’t have to create an expensive in-house team to do it.
Maintain your blog
Blogs have been key pillars of modern business websites for some time now, and keeping them functional is essential for improving organic traffic and SEO. The great thing about blogs is that they can be used to cover a wide variety of topics that are relevant to your industry. Not to mention, they provide a good opportunity for your company to connect with others in the industry, and this cooperation can benefit both parties.
The goal of your blog is to create unique, high-quality content that will attract users and search engine crawlers alike. Blogs are the ideal medium for better visibility, but they need to contain relevant content. Depending on your industry, you can create a wide variety of content types to fill the blog. Some can be cut-and-dry covers of relevant topics and products, while others can be opinion pieces that cover industry news.
Conclusion
There are many different ways to maximise the effectiveness of your business website. Focusing on UX design and SEO can get you far, but you need to incorporate as many modern website trends as possible for the best results. Consider some of the tips we’ve covered above, and see what you can use to improve your website.
