People are often cautioned against judging a book by its cover; however, this popular sentiment does not apply to website design at all.
As a business owner, your website is your digital storefront, allowing you to welcome users in to experience what you have to offer. Remember, you only get one chance to make to make a good first impression, so it’s critical that your website not only look appealing but be easy to navigate and use. This is often defined as the user experience, and it’s important that your website provides a good one.
Gestalt psychological principles — which are heavily used in many disciplines of design — highlight the significance of cohesiveness by emphasizing that the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts. This very principle can be applied to both digital marketing and website redesign in that each aspect or component of your brand or marketing campaign plays a vital role individually but work best in tandem with each other.
In terms of generating more leads for your business, this means that your web design, web development, high quality content, and SEO strategies should all come together to reach your target audience. It’s magic, really!
However, if you find that you’re not generating as many leads as you’d like to, taking a good, hard look at your website is a great place to start. In fact, a website redesign may be just what the doctor — in this case, the web designer — ordered in order to generate more leads.
Outdated websites that perform and look like they were designed “back in the day” — circa 2008 — are a common reason why businesses are unable to generate leads. While being nostalgic about the good ol’ days can be fun, in terms of web design, it can be downright painful to both see and experience for the user. The digital revolution has brought consumers instant gratification, and your website redesign should provide that.
In fact, you have an average of a mere 10 seconds to leave an impression and show consumers what you have to offer. After this time is up — and often before — they’ll move on. This means that optimizing your website for mobile use is critical, as four out of five consumers browse and shop on their smartphones. Unsurprisingly, 48% of users that arrive on a business website that doesn’t work well on their mobile devices take it as an indication that the business simply does not care.
Therefore, while planning any website redesign project, it’s absolutely essential to make sure you optimize for mobile use. This is absolutely critical to providing a pleasant user experience and can easily make all the difference.
While technically there is no “secret weapon” or digital marketing “snake oil” that will allow you generate leads overnight, combining a solid content marketing strategy, a strong social media presence, as well as a website that is both engaging and easy to use is an excellent place to start.
