In today’s online orientated world, effective website design strategy is essential. After all, without a solid website strategy, how else will you be able to reach the millions of potential customers who could be actively searching for your business right this very second?
The online world of business works in a similar way that traditional brick and mortar businesses work – customers walk through the door, and browse the products on offer, before deciding whether or not they wish to make a purchase. In the online world, the main difference is that customers are far more likely to make that purchase, as they are already often searching for your products. This is why it is so important to ensure that your website is perfectly geared towards making sales and making those browsing customers purchasing customers.
To begin your web design and online marketing strategy, you first need to consider the factors that influence online sales. Each one of these plays a vital role in determining your success online.
Determine your Goals
The first step in developing a winning website is to determine your specific goals. For most businesses, generating leads and making sales is the primary goal, which means that you should be focusing your efforts on making these goals happen.
- Attracting as many web users as possible, and ensuring that they click through your website through online searches. This means your website design strategy should include SEO elements to bring in these users and help them browse your website easily.
- Help users easily find the information that they need to make an educating buying decision on the products that they are looking to buy. This means effective navigation to help them find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
- Entice and encourage users to purchase, get a quote or make an enquiry. This means adding plenty of calls to action that point customers in the right direction.
- Bring in new business and continue repeat business to ensure that your customer base grows. This means marketing your business online, through fresh content, reviews, blog posts and social media marketing to draw potential business from a number of different sources.
Understand Your Target Market
For the best success in your online marketing strategies, you need to understand your primary target market. Are you targeting women, other businesses, students or homeowners? Or are you targeting a large demographic of consumers for a home shopping business? Whether you have a small market or a large one, you need to target each market group in order to bring in online sales.
The design of your website should be developed with your primary market in mind, to ensure the best success with your website design strategy. If your market is younger, then a fun, ‘cool’ design will attract these users. If your market is the female population, then a feminine design will attract your audience. Navigation, images, content and other design elements should all be designed with your market in mind.
Consider Professional Website Design
One of the most effective ways to implement a solid website design strategy is considering hiring a professional agency to design and develop your website. Some may feel that they can save money by designing their website themselves, and while this may be true, this will not always give the results one would expect. Professional designers have years of experience, and understand factors such usability, navigation, functionality, conversion, SEO and many other design elements that are required for a successful website.
Designating a budget for your website is often the best way to ensure the best results, which in the long term will be well worth the money spent by having your website designed by professionals.
Avoiding Outdated Content – for Users and Google
Old, outdated content is not only bad for conversion, but it is also bad for Search Engine Optimisation. A good website needs fresh content that is updated on a regular basis in order to rank well in the Search Engines. Likewise, browsing users also require fresh content in order to find new products and services, and find a reason to use your services again.
Add unique content features such as video, blog posts, reviews and anything else that puts you ahead of your competition, and both users and Google will sit up and take notice.
But what to do with your old content? Well, you should consider to You might also want to consider to update and republish your outdated content.
Monitoring Your Online Results
The final important thing to consider for your website design strategy is website analytics, which allow you to monitor your online results. This will tell you how many visitors you are getting each day, where they are coming from to find your website, which search terms they are using, where they are based, and what other pages they are viewing on your website. This data provides invaluable insight into how your customers act on your website, which in turn helps you consistently improve your online marketing strategies to bring in those customers, time and time again.