Your business may not have a marketing website design, but that is no excuse for a poorly designed website. In today’s online economy, presentation is arguably as important as the quality of the product or service you are promoting; poor website design sends a quick and lasting impression to those who “click in.”
An intuitive, easy to navigate, responsive website lets people know your business is keeping pace with the times. For this reason, it is vital to ensure that your website reflects who you are as a business and gives the message you want it to relay.
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Tips to Optimize Website Design to Improve Ranking
Your Website Talks
Like it or not, your website speaks on your behalf, creating impressions and either attracting or turning away potential business. A cheap-looking, non-functional website gives the impression that the business does not care to invest in the things that matter. A website that is not user-friendly may tell your visitors you lack caring customer service. A blog that has not been updated may speak of neglect. Regardless of your product or service, it is vital to consistently evaluate the message you are sending across the worldwide web. Creating a user-friendly, professional, and meaningful site may take some time and money, but the alternative may be even more costly.
User-centric Design
When a visitor clicks into your website, what is the first thing that meets his eye? What would you want to see if you were a guest? People enter websites with a purpose in mind. Most visitors will arrive at your website because of a search engine result. Their arrival is purposeful, and has an expectation of finding what they came for. As a business, your website must be focused on providing easy access to the things people want. Rather than building your site around what is important to you, build it, or have it built, with the user in mind. A user-centric website not only arrests the attention, but it provides user-friendly access to things that are important to consumers. Visitors should not have to dig for what they are looking; it usually ends up in frustration and exiting the site.
Professionalism
The look of your website should reflect your business. People do not come to an attorney’s website to find engaging games for kids, or to a medical website to answer trivia questions about the weather. While there are certain techniques that can make a website more fun and engaging, never let that overrule the appropriate tone for your line of work.
Content Matters
According to Businessweek, people come to your site for its content (1). Although the first impression of design and layout may attract attention, content will determine whether visitors return or not. Many companies make the mistake of having a well-designed website and thinking that their search engine rankings or name-recognition will keep traffic flowing and visitors engaged. And while these things are critical elements, the cry for excellent content keeps sounding. Top website advisors point out that users are looking for information: the best websites, those stay at the top of rankings and are most often linked to, are those that excel at providing fresh, quality content (2).
Make it Accurate
The impression given by your website should be accurate. If you are a consulting firm that creates innovative fresh ideas for others, your website should look innovative and fresh, do not let a shoddy website tell others your ideas are worthless. And if you are outstanding in your line of work but are all thumbs when it comes to website design, pay someone to build a fantastic site that reflects how well you do what you are good at. After all, to a consumer the best websites reflect the best businesses.
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Web in your search for suppliers. “With powerful search engines like Google , you can locate suppliers all over the world,” says product-sourcing guru Roger Green. “It’s a low-cost way to go exploring.Nice post Thanks for posting 🙂
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Great tips for website owners 🙂 I totally agree that people go to your site because of content so in addition, it also pays to have your web content proofread to avoid wrong spellings and poor grammar.
I don’t have good writing skills but as an online visitor myself seeing typo errors in a website is a big turn-off. 🙁
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Your post is so true. I especially agree to the User-centric Design. Personally, what I want in a website is easy navigation, minimalistic design (not too flashy or colorful), and accurate and interesting content. I also don’t like websites that look like they’re trying too hard to impress visitors.
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In this post panda and penguin world I think that having a User-centric Design (as you pointed out) may be more important than before. Google seems to have become more difficult to satisfy. By moving away from SEO, it may be easier to give more importance to the user experience.
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I think from now on, I should hire a professional. I can design a website, but I am one of those people who don’t have patience. I know that is not a good thing, but I that is how I am. I did do a couple of websites on my own, and they both looked good. It’s just that it took me about a week of perfecting it.
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That’s true and very important. I tend to choose a business by its template. When I find the website dynamic, new and attractive, I’ll read and ponder working with the business, on the other hand, if I see a bunch of text, I’ll ignore it.
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This is great article and many good tips can be found.
Good looking and eye catchable design is one of the main things for visitors to stay at website , also quality content frequently updated.
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Content is always a good thing and to go a step further quality content is king. For any business that is using a website clear succinct information can really benefit the website.
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I believe that the answer to the question of website vs. blog lies on your corporate marketing strategy. Who do you want to focus on? Who is your target market? I also agree with OhioTom. Having no blog is still way better than having a blog that is not regularly updated. It is very easy to start up a blog. Maintaining and updating it is the difficult part.
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Very good tips! Obviously having a well designed website is one of the most important things for your business, since it is the first thing people look at. If your site looks good, people will come back, just because the design feels good for them. Having good user interface is the most important thing in a website.
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The attention to customer-friendly website design is often lost when businesses are trying to brand their website and make it look fabulous. Too many times I have gone to a website and couldn’t find the information about the product or company that I was looking for. These tips are a great reminder for business owners to make sure the function of their website is considered in addition to the look of the website. If people can’t find what they are looking for, they will quickly hit the back button and find a website that CAN answer their questions.
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I like this article, its conscise and informative. I would say that content is definately the most important factor for any business that operates through a website and wants to build healthy traffic.
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The abandoned blog or empty forum is a common mistake made by site owners. The same thing can happen with company Facebook pages, they can actually be a disservice to the site if they don’t take off. In the case of a blog, you should ask yourself if you really want the blog front and center when a user first visits the site. A blog that is seldom updated doesn’t need to be above the fold at the root level of your domain. You should also have multiple articles written ahead of time and schedule to be posted incrementally, then continue adding more posts to keep the backlog filled. You could also populate forums with Q&A information to get the discussions started. In many cases, people may just need to ask a quick question on your forum, or look for an answer, and may not intend on frequenting it.
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Great points OhioTom! Thanks for the awesome comment!
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You make a lot of very good points about websites. It’s a lot to think about. I can’t even think of the number of times I’ve left a website, frustrated because I can’t find the information I need easily because the websites are out of date or difficult to navigate. You don’t need to update the whole site every day, but to have an updates news page would be nice.
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I’m glad you don’t focus on particular artistic or professional design and art, and instead focus on user-friendly aspects. Not everyone is professional site designer, and not everyone can afford one. Using a basic template isn’t bad, as long as you can brand it in some way to make it unique. Worrying about ease of use, clearly presented information and keeping things on the site specific to its purpose is most important.
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These are great tips. As the saying goes, “content is king.” Not only does good content keep readers coming back for more, but keyword-rich content certainly helps SEO, attracting more first-time visitors to your businesses website. Personally, the more attractive and informative websites are the ones that keep me coming back time and time again.