Partner Article

5 things that will make a web site great for 2014

Your web site is such an important part of your brand proposition. In today’s age, it’s one of the first places people go to validate what they might have seen, heard or wondered about you! In most cases, it’s because they received a referral like this:

“Oh you should take a look at that digital media company…Digitaa, no Digiteea or something like that! Google it and you’ll find them. Look for Lisa Bean, that might come up.”

It’s therefore very important that your web site not only looks fantastic, but that it is highly findable too. The third core element you must design for is functionality, not just in terms of working links but in terms of your web site performing a job: giving the customers the information they need to justify an enquiry!

So, here are our top 5 web design tips for 2014:

Design for the smart phone first:

‘Responsive web design’ as it is termed is critical because so many people browse on their smart phones and tablets so it’s important your web site adjusts to fit (or ‘respond to’) the size of any screen. That aside, the reason you’d design your web site for smart phones first is because it should encourage you to be succinct.

One of the traps people fall into when designing their web site is they cram it full of lots of boring, irrelevant content divided up into a drop down menu with sub menus and more links besides! These days people want focused, succinct and niche so try to hone your proposition down into 3 or 4 key services and build your web site up from those.

If you have 10 or more services, you can offer the ‘bolt ons’ once you have a customer through the door but to get them there, you need to be clear about your offering.

Make the blog a key feature:

SEO has changed dramatically over the last year. Once upon a time, cramming your site with key words, metatags, wordy titles and backlinks was the way to reach page one. These days, success boils down to content, connections and consistency and your news / blog feed is central to this.

To understand this, it’s best to think of Google as a little human with a clip board in your screen. When someone searches for something and they land on your site, Google will assess how long someone stays in your site, how many links they click and whether they engage with or share your content. Over time, the content you generate will paint a picture about the kind of web site you are and Google will log this and send in more people who search for that type of content.

Therefore, it is important not to write for Google, but to write for people because they will be the judge of the content – if they like it, they’ll stay longer and read more. If they don’t, they’ll leave and Google will take note!

Don’t forget too, that good content reveals a great deal about your insights, experience and expertise. People will grow to trust you over time and when the time is right, they’ll choose you to buy from!

Give people a reason to buy:

There has been a lot of noise in the industry that ‘to sell’ you need to ‘not sell’. In line with the point above, the more you show your expertise, the more people will be inclined to buy – no-one likes the pushy sales pitch!

That said, you still need to give people a reason to buy! There are some overt, and some covert ways to do this. The overt way is to list key features and promised on specific service pages: we’ve been going for 10 years, we are trusted by the likes of X, Y and Z, we are qualified in A, B and C.

In terms of covert ways, I don’t need sneaky, I just mean they don’t look like obvious selling points. Try things like customer testimonials along side photos of the customer or the product, case studies with excellent results, reviews from the industry, links to PR etc. The elements are less about ‘selling the product / service’ and more about building credibility and trust.

Update and evolve:

We update our web site monthly, if not weekly. Things change: our customers give us feedback, we see what competitors are doing, we have new ideas etc. and these need to be reflected in your most important bit of sales literature: your web site!

As you add new team members, buy new equipment, move premises, win new contracts, launch new work, introduce new services, start a price guarantee etc tell people via the one medium they are most likely to review: your web site.

Long gone are the days when you could put a site live and leave it to do its thing for months on end. These days, you need to keep on top of content, messaging, branding, SEO etc. so building this into your schedule, or outsourcing it to another company is critical.

Capture data:

‘Big data’ has been dubbed as the next big thing and all big data starts from humble positions. You might be a start up focusing on sales or you might have ignored social media and data capture for so long you don’t think it’s worth starting now. Whatever your reason for avoiding it, put it to one side and make a start.

Collecting your customers data is hugely important because people don’t tend to make one off purchases anymore. People like to engage with a brand, be part of its development and stay up to date on changes. Take Nike or Apple for example. People want to like, follow, share what that brand is up to and that didn’t happen by accident, that was by design.

The simple steps are setting up and integrating Facebook and Twitter to your web site. Going a step further, you could set up a mailing list and add a ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ button. This will allow you to capture the information of people who are interested but might not be ready to buy. By sending them useful, relevant content and material you will start to build a relationship that could develop into a sale in the future. Plus, if anything happens that you need to communicate quickly, you will have a ready made bank of people, perhaps split by customers and potential customers to whom you can email.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Digitia .