Design your way

In this highly competitive era, a successful business must be resilient enough to weather anything the economy throws its way. The pandemic is one of the many challenges that has pushed many towards having an online presence. Every business must have a website, as it is not only a place where your customers visit to get more information about you, the website also represents your business brand.

Brand Identity

Before you nose-dive into doing a detailed post-mortem on your website, you must first identify your business brand identity. Your brand identity refers to everything visual about your brand, including the logo, design, company colors, and others; whatever your customers can see about your business.

Therefore, ascertain and know your brand identity before you start asking yourself if your website reflects your brand. To do so, look into the unique selling points that make you stand out from others; that x-factor you have that others do not. Also, identify your targeted customers, the piece of the pie that you can reign in and be successful.

Does Your Website Reflect Your Brand?

Caption: Global internet users 2010-2025 (Source: Statista)

Since your website is your online voice, you have to ensure that your website indeed reflects you accurately. After all, giving an excellent impression to your audience is a driving factor to increase the chances of completing a sales cycle.

Unfortunately, many businesses focus more on establishing the physical company and its image. As such, many fail to synchronize their digital and physical business successfully. However, your digital business should not be an after-thought; it is easier for your customers to visit your website than to come to your physical doorstep. Hence, do not neglect your website.

1. Does Your Website Align with Your Messaging?

Go through your website and ask yourself if your website resonates with your business core messaging. It is simply unacceptable if your website conveys conflicting and unclear messages to your customers. You end up confusing your audience, and they will not think twice about going elsewhere.

Your business core message is based on your company’s core values, principles, and characteristics that shape your business. Take care of how you convey your message; this can take the form of your content and web visuals such as images and colors used, not forgetting where you place your logo, and more.

For example, if you want to convey a sober tone, use a more serious design and scheme. Do not use comical and quirky graphics. However, if your business is more of a perky and fun nature, you can use striking bright colors and visuals to represent you. In short, remember to use visuals that match your brand identity and personality.

Does Your Website Reflect your Unique Selling Points?

Check if your website showcases your business’s unique selling points. You would want your customers to know what makes you stand out among the crowd; those points that make you tick, reasons that would drive customers to your doorstep instead of others, and anything that you have and others do not.

Take caution not to clutter your website with tons of ‘unique selling points; this can backfire and dilute the actual unique selling points you have. Pick only the valid selling points your business has and make sure to display them clearly on your website without having your customers searching high and low for them.

Does Your Website Exude Professionalism?

Consistency is an essential factor in any business; this applies to everything you do. Take special care to be consistent in your web visuals and user experience; this helps build a stronger connection with your customers.

If you are inconsistent in your brand and web visuals, your audience can see this as unprofessional and unreliable. All visual styles, colors, font types, and sizes should sync with your business cards and social media accounts. Any design method must be focused and consistent with your brand. Content must be authoritative, engaging, meaningful, vetted through, and checked thoroughly before publishing.

All media used are of top-notch quality as this sends a simple message to your customers that you are providing quality products and services. You want your audience to be confident when visiting your website, knowing what to expect, and navigating around with no problems at all.

Is Your Website Catered to the Right Audience?

Like in any business, you should already have in mind your targeted market; so, keep this in mind when you design your website. Your customers will feel that the website was designed, especially for them, and feel more connected to you; they will stay loyal.

As such, focus on crafting valuable and engaging content for your targeted audience. Keep updating your content in a fixed interval (not too far apart) to set the right expectations from the start. Your audience will appreciate this and look forward to coming back again. Regularly giving fresh and meaningful content is key to enhancing your brand.

Is Your Website Staying Ahead of Your Customers?

The highly competitive world with customers’ ever-changing needs and buying habits make it hard for any business to succeed and stay successful. Hence, if you do not constantly re-evaluate where your business stands to stay ahead of your customers and others, you will soon fade to be irrelevant.

You have to adapt as and when needed to be relevant and stay successful. Your website should follow suit. Consistently charge up your website batteries; there will always be an endless list of competitors up and coming. So, use your website to bring in more opportunities.

You have to keep abreast of any technological advancements, especially security. You want to provide a safe environment for your customers when browsing your website. As long as you have earned their trust, your customers will stay.

Does Your Website Sport a Responsive Design?

Caption: Global number of mobile devices 2020-2025 (Source: Statista)

The growth of mobile devices worldwide is undeniable; this shows a clear dependence on them to help fulfill daily activities. As such, if your website is not mobile-friendly, you are not only cutting a chunk of the pie out of your revenue list, this can also reflect badly on your brand. Also, mobile device users will view this as a ‘don’t care for their business’ attitude from your end.

As such, make sure to give the user experience your mobile users expect. Your mobile site should be the same as the website for familiarity and consistency. Like the web version, navigation must be accessible and intuitive with speedy responses.

Is Your Website Speedy?

People are not patient; they expect websites to load as fast as the snap of your fingers. If your website takes a long time to load, your audience will view your business as not being serious. No matter how beautiful you have designed your website, how informative your content is, or how well you have positioned your core messages, your audience will not be able to enjoy any of them.

Any website goal is to give that optimised customer experience; a snail website fails miserably in doing so and thus reflects poorly on your brand.

Does Your Website Have a Notable ‘About Us’?

Many believe that the ‘About Us’ page is useless and will not spend much time on this. Do not underestimate the importance of the ‘About Us’ section. An informative and well-designed ‘About Us’ can give you that extra edge in helping a customer choose you over others.

As such, invest some time into crafting a clear, accurate, and concise ‘About Us’ page. Including visuals helps rather than dumping only text and words into this page. Use the ‘About Us’ page to bring forth your brand identity and personality.

Conclusion

Since your website is the gateway for your customers to know your company, it creates lots of opportunities for you to reach out to more. So, make sure your website represents you accurately paints a clear image of your business and what you have to offer; this ultimately determines how your customers perceive your brand.

Author Profile

Beh loves to explore the latest SEO, digital marketing and technology news. She is also the digital marketer of WebRevenue. Reach out to her via LinkedIn and discuss her favourite topics together.

 

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