The Importance of a Well-Designed Website to Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Every business owner knows that in order to get ahead in today’s market you have to work diligently at creating a strong and authentic online presence. This means developing a marketing strategy that can reach target audiences on various digital platforms. As many digital marketing methods are designed to drive consumers to your website to perform a call to action, it would seem obvious that a lot of time and effort must be put into the overall design of your website.

What Makes a Good Website?

Some entrepreneurs aren’t aware of all the elements that go into creating an effective website. Though aesthetics and appeal are part of it, a great looking site that isn’t user-friendly and doesn’t align with other digital marketing efforts will only take you so far.

From increasing traffic and conversion rates to improving customer experiences and authentic search engine results, whatever marketing goals you have in mind all lead back to having a well-designed website. Digital marketing agencies that offer Responsive Website Design services consider all facets of a marketing campaign. These include, but are not limited to, your company goals, the needs of your target audience, and key components such as those listed below, to create an interactive and up-to-date website that your target audience can relate to.

Great User Experiences – No matter what the purpose of your website, if visitors don’t have a positive experience while searching your page, chances are they’re not coming back. Your site should not only be pleasing to the eye, but it should be easy to navigate, have clear calls to action, and be free of disturbances like flashy videos and over-sized graphics, slow download and upload times, and frequent crashes. Marketing experts are aware of the various elements required to create a positive user experience. This includes:

Website usefulness – In effective web design, it is imperative to have a clear understanding of who your target consumers are and how a website could benefit them.
Adherence to functionality – Online users are not going to have a positive experience on a site that doesn’t function properly. An effective website will not have issues like broken links, slow load/download times, blank screens, etc.
Ease of Use – A website must not only function properly but must be easy to use. If you’re designing an eStore, for instance, the customer should easily be able to navigate the site, find the merchandise they want, and make a purchase without having to jump through hoops.
Influence – A good website knows how to influence their target audience to act. Whether that action is to make a purchase, read a blog, or subscribe to a newsletter, the most successful sites know how to influence their users by providing authentic content and building trust.
Visuals – Of course aesthetics play a role in the success of a website design. It is important to understand what attracts your audience. While some users might not mind pop-ups, flashy fonts, and videos on every page, others may prefer a more simplistic layout with easy to read content and graphics.

Effective, Concise, and Consistent Branding – Your company website will play a significant role in helping you to define your brand online. A well-designed website is consistent with other marketing mediums from the logo and colors to the content and messages portrayed. It is therefore important that your site sends a positive message that resonates with your target audience.

Search Engine Optimization – If you want to increase your visibility online and draw in more visitors, search engine optimization (SEO) will need to be implemented throughout your website and all other digital marketing mediums you decide to use. Ensuring that your content is not only engaging, but up-to-date and relevant to your audience, niche, and brand will boost your search engine results increasing your potential to reach more online users.

Conversion Rate Optimization – Getting a bunch of visitors to your site is a great accomplishment, however, if they’re not taking any action, your brand won’t succeed. Your website needs to clearly spell out what you’d like visitors to do. Digital marketing agencies use conversion rate optimization practices to improve web pages that have clear calls to action. Whether it’s filling out a contact form, creating an account, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase, they will ensure that each page meets your goals to drive online users to take action.

The idea with conversion optimization strategies is creating marketing that keeps the audience engaged beyond the commercial aspect of things. By creating exclusive or limited time offers, demo, introductory, or testimonial videos, and subscription lists, for instance, marketing experts successfully capture the attention of your target audience and increase the likelihood of visitors becoming lifelong customers.

Analytics – As the trends in marketing and technology continue to evolve, you’ll need to update your website to reflect accordingly. Analytical tools help businesses to see what’s working and what isn’t for their visitors. There are a plethora of measuring tools that can be used to determine the performance of a website.

Some will help you in determining which search engines are providing the most visitors while others will assist you in understanding which pages are most popular, how long visitors spend on each page, and how many visitors actually performed the action (buy, subscribe, read, etc). This provides entrepreneurs with the opportunity to optimize the site to the needs of the users for improved results. Any established marketing agency that you work with should have several tools that can be used to measure your site’s performance.

In a society that relies heavily on technology to conduct research and complete business transactions, it is imperative for businesses to keep up. Your company website must not only be aesthetically appealing, but well optimized, easy to navigate, and easily accessible on various digital platforms. It should speak volumes about your brand and send a message to your target audience. Digital marketing efforts like social media, blog posts, advertising, link building, emails, and more fail to be as successful if your website is poorly designed. If you’re not well-versed in web design, working with a reputable digital marketing agency is advised.

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