When brick-and-mortar shops closed during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses tried to stay afloat by digitizing their stores. GoDaddy, one of the leading web hosting platforms, saw a significant rise in its e-commerce products sales, with a 48 percent increase in new paying subscribers from February to April 2020.
This finding shows that a website is indispensable in a business’s marketing and sales, especially with consumers growing increasingly reliant on digital channels and services. Even brick-and-mortar businesses can benefit from having a website since it helps them become searchable, both online and offline.
However, simply launching a website isn’t enough. You need to design it in a way that encourages users to interact with it. Otherwise, your website won’t bring you any new leads and customers.
Most online users judge websites based on their intuitiveness, meaning how easy it is to read the content and browse through the other pages. If they find your website confusing to use, then they’ll click out of the page and look for one that’s easier to use.
The intuitiveness of your website largely relies on how you lay out the content, including the text, images, clickable buttons, and even the whitespace. You need to make sure your webpage layout naturally leads the user to wherever you want them to go. That’s usually toward the bottom of the page, where you have your call-to-action button, asking them to sign up or contact you.
One of the easiest ways to ensure an intuitive web design is by organizing all these elements according to natural eye tracking patterns. The human eye naturally perceives the most attention-grabbing elements first. So, in a typical web layout, users will likely process content according to this visual hierarchy: size, color, contrast, alignment, repeated elements, whitespace, then texture.
We recommend following the F pattern for text-heavy pages, which places the most important visual clues on the left and top parts of the page where people start reading. But if your page has more images and rich media than text, follow the Z pattern instead, places the important information in a zigzag pattern across the page, which is how people typically scan content.
Navigation
Users enter your website through various landing pages. So, you need to make sure that they can find whatever information they need no matter where they land on your site first. This is where navigation comes in.
Clear navigation makes it easy for visitors to find what they need and encourages them to interact more with your website. It lets them go from browsing through your products to reading your blog in just a few clicks.
You want users to explore your site as much as possible because the more they do, the more information they gather about your brand and offerings. This aids their decision-making, convincing them to check out their cart and increasing your conversion rate.
Your website navigation largely depends on your site structure. You need to make sure that the pages you want users to see are accessible through the header. If your website has too many pages to fit in the header, a problem that’s common for e-commerce sites, you can add a fat footer that appears on all your web pages.
A fat footer lists all your category pages and other relevant pages on the bottom of the webpage, giving users a bird’s eye view of your site. Everything listed in the footer should be clickable, of course.
Another addition that can greatly improve your navigation is a search feature, which is especially helpful for e-commerce sites. This lets visitors type in what they’re looking for instead of digging through your category pages.
Content
Your content is what convinces people to keep interacting with your website. People assess your content to decide if your products and services are worth buying. If they’re not impressed with what they see, you’ll likely lose them to competitors with content that fulfills their information needs.
Remember that consumers naturally follow the buyer’s journey, which goes from awareness to consideration to decision. People look for different kinds of information as they go through the journey. You need to make sure your website content provides whatever information they need at each stage to aid in their decision-making and increase their chances of converting.
Here’s a breakdown of the types of content that people usually look for at each buyer’s journey stage:
- Awareness: Blog posts, white papers, research studies, analyst reports
- Consideration: Tutorial videos, comparison posts, how-to guides, case studies
- Decision: Product comparisons, product reviews, product demos, customer testimonials
Search Optimization
The last step in building a conversion-driving website is to make sure it’s searchable. The bulk of your SEO strategy still relies on your keyword research and link building, but there are other factors to consider that can help strengthen your online visibility.
The three other elements mentioned above also contribute to your search optimization, which should make your SEO work a bit easier. Site structure and navigation, for instance, are vital aspects of your SEO strategy. Your site structure helps Google identify the most important pages of your site, which can influence the ranking of those said pages.
Your content, of course, contains your keywords and backlinks and is the basis of how high Google will rank you on the search engine results page.
Another important website optimization element is mobile-friendliness. Google now uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking, so your website should perform as well on mobile as it does on desktop.
Other than search engines, consumers also demand that websites be optimized for mobile. People are more dependent than ever on their smartphones for shopping purposes, so they expect websites to be accessible on mobile. This means that if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you could be losing out on hundreds, maybe even thousands, of conversion opportunities because smartphone users found your website difficult to use.
Wrap-Up
When designed effectively, a website can be a lead-generating, conversion-driving tool that helps you reach your business goals. Your website is an essential part of your long-term digital marketing strategy since this is where you convince people that your brand is worth their time, money, and trust.
Ultimately, investing in your website strategy means taking the time to build your brand’s visibility online, credibility, and trustworthiness, all of which contribute to your business’s long-term success.
Digital Marketing Agency in Orlando
Tonic Enterprises is a full-service digital marketing agency based in Lake Mary, Florida. With our team of tech-savvy search specialists, content creators, and webmasters, we’ll help you build a website that helps you achieve your short-term and long-term business goals.
With Tonic Enterprises, you’ll get a user- and search-friendly website that wins you new leads and customers every day.
Learn more about our website design services or book a consultation with us today.