Whether you want to compete with the big players in your industry or you just want to go up against your local competition to gain more customers, web design plays a surprisingly important role for the success of small businesses. Effective web design can mean all the difference in converting leads to sales, improving SEO, and bringing more customers to you with local searches.
Everyone’s Going Mobile
First of all, more and more people are using their phones and tablets for Internet searches than ever before. Studies have shown that 35% of all US Internet traffic is now mobile, and mobile searches have actually passed desktop searches within the last year. That’s right – more than 60% of all searches are performed on mobile devices, which means that you can’t afford to ignore mobile users in your site’s web design.
Fortunately, though, with the rise of responsive and interactive design, it’s never been easier to have a mobile-friendly, consistent online presence. You don’t have to worry about creating a separate mobile site or developing an app. Instead, you’ll have a site that responds to the devices your viewers are using and gives them optimized experiences.
Google Rewards Good Design
Next, take a look at the sites that appear at the top of Google searches. They almost invariably show attractive designs with a mix of text, static images, and videos. Google rewards these sites with higher rankings because video and pictures are more engaging than text alone. When a site integrates different forms of media in its design, it fulfills Google’s parameters for higher quality content that users will want to see.
An SEO-friendly website is also “crawlable” by search engines. In other words, search engines must be able to read everything on your site, so if you do not have the right balance of images and text, search engines will not understand and your ranking will decrease. It’s important not to overload the user with too much media as this will negatively impact the overall user experience.
Reduce Your Bounce Rate
Web design that’s too busy can deter users from continuing through to find out more about your business. If you haven’t paid much attention to the design of your site, even when people do find it through a search or through a link on a related page, they’ll likely bounce away if they can’t immediately find what they’re looking for. Likewise, “mystery meat” links that make users guess where they’ll be taken will also frustrate them and lead to a higher bounce rate, too.
Good web design draws your users in and makes them want to know more about your company and your products. It’s essential to improving your conversion rate and diminishing your bounce rate.
Good Design Makes It Easy to Add Fresh Content
With the right web design, you won’t have trouble adding new blog posts and products, updating information, and/or creating other fresh content. This is incredibly important, as fresh content helps improve your SEO to drive you up in the rankings on results pages.
With quality content and strong calls to action, you can improve users’ engagement with your site and take the necessary steps to “ask for the sale” and convert leads to customers. The more quality content you have, the more you’ll see increases in meaningful traffic to your site. Good web design creates space for this kind of content and makes it easy to keep your site fresh and up to date.
Want to learn more about how quality web design can affect your small business? At Gauge Digital Media, we specialize in improving our clients’ design and digital marketing strategies to optimize their sites and create the most opportunities possible to improve customer conversion and retention rates. Call us today at 410-376-7709 or fill out our online contact form, and one of our expert team members will be in touch with you shortly.
