How old is your website? In today’s fast faced internet world, websites become outdated very quickly. Website design experts say that if a website is two years old or older, it may already be an antique. You need your site to stay up to date with changes in your industry. Your website is never going to really be finished, you need to keep updating it. This is important because about 48% of consumers say they will develop their opinion of how credible a business is based on the website. As new software design comes along, you need to keep up. Here are some web design tips to make your site work for you.
- Make it mobile friendly. More and more people are accessing the internet from their mobile devices. A few years ago, the tide turned in terms of who is accessing the web and from where. More people will look things up online from a mobile device than from a computer. The new software design makes it easier and easier to get to websites from phones and tablets. If you run a local business, it is even more important to look great on mobile devices. When people are out and about and looking for a place to eat, for example, they will look to their smartphone to find a place to eat. The feature on Google that allows people to find listings “near me” has become a lot more popular in recent years.
- Make sure it loads quickly. People do not have patience with websites that load slowly. It does not matter if it is beautiful once it loads, you have about three seconds for your site to load completely or you will lose at least 40% of consumers. Your bounce rate will climb to 100% if at the four second mark people are still waiting for it to load. That number increases further to 150% at the eight second mark. In reality, eight seconds is not a lot of time but in terms of websites loading, it is an eternity.
- Keep it simple. Simplicity is your friend when it comes to software design and online marketing. When the web was first being developed, people and companies put everything but the kitchen sink on their web pages. If you take a look at websites that were developed in the 1990s, you will see what looks like a busy mess. Websites today should take advantage of white space (empty space) to make a site look more professional.
- Make sure your content is top notch. Content will always be “king.” Software design experts note that most budgets for digital marketing include a big chunk for content creation and management. You need to have great content if you expect your visitors to become users of your site. It needs to be helpful, informative and well written. When your content is helpful, people will want to visit your site and they will tell their networks about it. This point cannot be over stated.
- Link back to your other content. When you are drafting new content, think of other related content that is already on your site. You may need to go back and edit that a bit but you can create more traffic to other parts of your website when you refer to content that was previously published.
- Use your keywords everywhere. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), you need to use the right keywords in your content. You also need to put it in your URL, the content titles, image tags, meta descriptions and headers. This is another area where you will be constantly tweaking the keywords that you use. Before you start a new SEO campaign, you should do some research of how your keywords are doing.
- Use your keywords across your social media channels. Google indexes social media posts that are on Facebook and Twitter, for instance. You need to use your keywords on all of your social media channels to extend how much they do for your brand.
Your website is very much the face of your brand. It can help you put your best foot forward and grow, not just your brand but your bottom line as well.