Online sales increased by over 30% in the spring of 2020.
Part of that had to do with the COVID-19 quarantine but online shopping has been growing in popularity over the last decade.
Businesses that want to stay competitive in the future need to make sure they have a website. And those that have a website need to make sure it’s optimized to reflect growing customer expectations.
In this blog, we’re going to discuss seven tips for effective website creation. Keep reading below to learn some of the things you can do to get seen online and increase your overall sales.
1. Website Creation 101: Make Your Website Easy To Navigate
When building a new website, start by selecting a theme that is both visually pleasing, clean, and capable of representing your brand.
Or, if you’re hiring a web designer to make it from scratch, make sure they understand your brand. You should also communicate your vision for the site.
It shouldn’t be overly complicated for customers to find what they’re looking for. Don’t include any overwhelming colors, fonts, or over-the-top graphics. Also, make sure you have a fast loading speed so visitors don’t get annoyed.
2. Consider Your Target Audience When Designing a Website
Hopefully, if you have an existing business, you’ve already done the legwork and identified your target audience. This is key to any type of marketing strategy.
Start off by researching your customer base. Find out what they’re looking for the most. Whatever that is should be prominent on your site.
Look at the competition. Who are they marketing to? Chances are you have similar audiences. You might be able to get a few ideas.
And, finally, you’ll want to consider specific customer demographics like age or gender, as well as interests and values.
3. An Effective Business Website Has Mastered Branding
The first two tips are required before you can do this one. Once you’ve selected an easy-to-use template and identified your target audience, it’s time to set up the branding on your website.
An easy way to do this is by establishing a branding guide that details everything about your brand (colors, logos, fonts, document templates, and more).
If you don’t have a guide, then make sure your designer is making every page match. There should be no question that all pages on your site should look like they’re from the same company.
Not doing this could result in a customer getting confused and bouncing off your site.
4. Optimize SEO To Boost Your Online Presence
Even with all of the paid ads you can order across Google and various social media platforms, SEO or search engine optimization is still a highly effective way to reach more customers.
Basically, SEO is when you find certain keywords or phrases that many people look for on search engines and embed them throughout your website in titles, headings, content, and more.
If done right your company will show up in the results when someone searches for that keyword.
Remember that maintaining good SEO for your website is an ongoing process. You’ll have to regularly go in and make adjustments as needed.
5. Your Business Website Needs To Be Mobile Responsive
Choose a website provider or designer who can ensure that your site is mobile responsive. This means visitors can easily browse your site on desktop computers or mobile devices like smartphones.
More than 60% of Google searches are being done on a smartphone and that amount keeps increasing each year.
Your business could be missing out on sales if prospective customers can’t access your site on a mobile device. In some cases, businesses will set up two sites (one for desktop and one for mobile) but this can cause errors or confusion.
The best thing to do is make your site mobile responsive from the very beginning.
6. Analyze Visitor Data & Your User Experience
Perhaps the greatest benefit from e-commerce is the amount of analytics that can be collected on website visitors. From what ads they clicked on to where they went on your site, this was data not so readily available years ago.
Here are some great marketing tips from others involving analytics:
- Find out what pages are the most popular and prioritize them
- Use behavior heatmaps to find out where visitors may be frustrated
- Learn what page elements are the most popular
- Track how long they’re spending on your pages reading content
- Discover what page elements are leading to conversions
A website is all about user experience. You need to make sure it’s easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for. And, most importantly, you need to make it simple for them to convert by purchasing an item, signing up for a phone call, or downloading a guide.
Today’s online shoppers don’t have the patience to wait. If your page is too confusing or it’s taking too long to get what they want, they’ll leave and look for the product or service elsewhere.
7. Never Forgot To Include Call to Actions
Our final tip goes hand-in-hand with user experience. As you’re designing your pages (adding content and page elements) ask yourself what’s the page supposed to do? What’s the page’s purpose?
This is because every page on your site should include some type of call to action. Not everything will be pushing the client for a sale, but there should be some kind of action on the page.
For example, you could have them click on the next article, enter their email address to sign up for an e-newsletter, or check out a product description.
Understanding Your Website Benefits
Website creation isn’t easy but there are so many benefits to making one for your business.
Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar or e-commerce operation, you can benefit from being more accessible to potential customers and collecting an incredible amount of data. The fact is more people are shopping online and they will expect you to have a user-friendly website. Do you enjoy reading the latest articles on technology and digital marketing? Check out the rest of our blog for informative pieces on designing apps, converting files, or using online paid advertising.
