Some Truths About Your Businesses Website Design (Part 3)

Last week in our website design series we covered credibility that you gain through professional design, as well as the need for mobile friendliness. This week we’ll take a look at expanding the functionality of your site, and some final thoughts.

New Tools

Especially if you’re upgrading your old site to WordPress, you’re going to find a whole new ecosystem of valuable tools available to you upon a redesign.

Things like:

  • eCommerce

  • SEO

  • website security

  • site backup

  • photo galleries

  • analytics

  • social sharing

…are just a few examples of features that have never been easier to implement at any time in history using WordPress. That’s not to say that everything becomes easy, but it certainly is easier now than it was 10 years ago.

Let’s not forget that a website built on a user-friendly CMS (content management system) like WordPress allows even you, the business owner, to edit your website.

It’s no harder than using Microsoft Word once your site has been designed. We offer hands-on walkthroughs for all of our web design clients so they never have to be held hostage to a web designer again for changes to their site).

My main goal in writing this whole series was to answer the question “why bother with a new site? Is it even worth it?” In some cases no, it’s not worth it.

You might not need a new site if you’re already following modern conventions (user friendly professional design, mobile-optimized), so I certainly wouldn’t encourage you to redesign if you’re already well represented. If you’re missing out on those key conventions though, you might consider a new site.

To summarize, a professional site:

  • builds credibility for your business

  • makes someone feel comfortable with you, and trust you more

  • lowers bounce rates

  • should be mobile-optimized

  • can indirectly increase traffic, especially if you take advantage of new SEO tools to promote your content

  • makes you feel proud to promote your business online! Don’t underestimate how much of a difference a little pride can make

Your website is the hub of your entire online business presence. Everything you do online should send people back to your website, so make sure it’s worth investing in.

You don’t necessarily need a new website (as I’ve qualified above), but you do need a good one.

Some Truths About Your Businesses Website Design (Part 2)

Last week we spoke about bounce rates and traffic in the context of a good web design. Here’s part 2 of that series.

Credibility

Nick Eubanks makes the point that “design has become a legitimacy signal” in this search engine watch article. And he’s right. Having a great design for your website gives one message:

“We’re serious about what we do; we’re professionals.”

This is probably the main benefit of having a professional design (unless your old site is difficult to use, in which case a new one would provide even more benefits). Positioning your business as professional also positions your business as trustworthy.

“How does that make sense?” says the reader. “Trust is about not having people take advantage of you, right?”

Not true. Trust is about more than that. There are perfectly honest people out there who can’t be trusted. Do you have any friends who are always late when you schedule a time to meet? Or even worse, a friend who often won’t show up? I’m sure they’re very well-intentioned people, but for some reason they can’t seem to manage their time – you can’t trust ‘em!

There are honest people that you can’t trust because they don’t have the ability within them to make good on their commitments.

There are multiple layers to trust, and having a stellar website helps to deliver one message – “You can trust that we are competent”. It doesn’t let them know if you’re honest, but at least they know you can do what you put your mind to.

By the way, if you need to prove that you’re honest, try testimonials.

Device Friendly

This fits in the with the bounce rate section, as well as the traffic section. It’s been shown that if your website isn’t mobile optimized, Google may penalize your search results. I quote:

“To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.”

Mobile users who have to pinch and drag their screens unnecessarily (because your site isn’t mobile) are more likely to bounce from your website (decreasing the effectiveness of your website, and possibly even your search engine rankings).

All of this is to say that you should have a mobile optimized website. Whether this is a mobile version of your site, or just a responsive design, it doesn’t matter (hint: we prefer responsive websites because they’re easier to maintain).

Unless your site was built in the last few years, it’s unlikely that it’s mobile-optimized. This reason alone is enough to consider a new, professional design.

If your current website is great but not responsive, you can always make a mobile version of your pre-existing website – it’s cheaper. If your site could use an overhaul already, the downfalls of missing out on responsive design could be a good motivator for redesign.

Next week we’ll cover part 3/3 of our web design series. It covers some of the great tools easily available to you upon a redesign, and some final thoughts.

Some Truths About Your Businesses Website Design (Part 1)

Why bother having a stunning website design? I’m exhausted from hearing different shallow excuses from webmasters as to why you should redesign your website.

Don’t get me wrong here, a shiny new website can make a HUGE impact on your business if done right, but not the classic excuses I hear from most web salesmen. I’m going on a journey to look at things from a more objective point of view.

Some things are greatly impacted by a well designed website, and others are not. Let us look together at which is which, and which is not.

Lowering Bounce Rates

A “bounce” happens when someone arrives at your site, and leaves without visiting any other pages. When someone bounces from your site, it means they have little interest in seeing what else you have to say. Needless to say, a high bounce rate is not good (over 70% especially is bad).

A poorly designed website can give you a high bounce rate, while a well designed site (with easy navigation) can decrease it. This is because visitors bounce when they don’t have a clear direction to go next.

But simply having a new site won’t decrease your bounce rate. Giving your visitors that “place to go next” is an important part of decreasing your bounce rate. More importantly than that though, is making visitors want to visit the rest of your site because the content on your site is so interesting – now THAT is an important way to decrease your bounce rate. Actually, it’s much more important than having a good design.

If you had very compelling and interesting content (think of your favorite website), it wouldn’t matter that your navigation wasn’t fancy or clear because your visitors would be so interested that they would knock over brick walls to find more of your content.

Think about every time a new album comes out. There’s always some up-and-coming computer whiz who finds a way to get early access to the album. He breaks into email accounts belonging to recording engineers – whatever it takes. Because the content of the music is so valuable that people are willing to hack for it.

I’m not suggesting that you make your content impossible to find, but I want to demonstrate the effect that good content has on people. They really will try hard to find more if it’s good enough.

On the flip side of that equation you might have totally boring content, but your site is easy to navigate – who cares? Why do I want to navigate your snore of a site anyways?

What if you had a compelling site, AND it looked great and was easy to use? Now you’ve got a winner! The bottom line is that content is more important than a good site design, but design certainly can help and is worth looking at.

You really can’t polish a turd. Although you can try.

Increasing Traffic Numbers

Although you may indirectly influence your traffic numbers by lowering your bounce rate, I want to note that a new site won’t dramatically increase your traffic. I’m sure it’s happened some time in the past, but that would be an outlier (not the norm).

The purpose of a new site is never to increase traffic, but to delight existing traffic (and hopefully persuade them to choose you).

You may be able to increase your sales by making some smart design choices in your eCommerce store, which is really a huge deal, but you likely won’t increase your overall traffic numbers in a big way. Think of a new design as adding a +20% multiplier to your efforts online.

Look for part 2/3 of this series next week as we talk about credibility and mobile devices.

Are Email Newsletters Still Profitable?

Email seems like an “old” kind of technology. I think back to the days of endless Viagra ads flooding your inbox (thank goodness for the spam filters we have today). If you’re not using email marketing already in your business today, it might seem irrelevant to you.

But it’s not irrelevant at all.

Email marketing has shown to make up 18%+ of overall business revenues in 2014 according to the national client email report – that’s nothing to sneeze at!

Compared to social media, way more people are using email. While 94% of internet users send and read email, only 61% of internet users have a social media account.

Beyond that, over 56% of digital marketers in the US find email marketing to be their most profitable online marketing (while only 37% say social media).

That doesn’t mean that these other forms of marketing aren’t effective – the % number just represents the proportion of people who find it to be their most useful marketing strategy – it doesn’t devalue any single option so much as it helps to pinpoint the “bread-and-butter” marketing strategies.

It shows that loads of digital marketers are finding email marketing to be extremely profitable.

There Are More Reasons That Newsletters Are Valuable

When someone receives your newsletter, they’re far more likely to be engaged with you. Not only is receiving an email subconsciously similar to receiving snail mail (it’s seen as more personal than social media), but you can even put the subscriber’s first name in your email so it really feels like a just-for-you letter – most email clients offer this feature.

You can bet that type of personal contact translates into more sales for your company.

By keeping in constant contact with your audience through email, you’re able to make them very comfortable with your company’s presence. And with comfort and familiarity comes sales.

You Own Your List

Spending money to grow your Facebook list can not only be a wise investment – it can be downright profitable. You should take advantage of every profitable marketing medium (social media) that you can, but regardless of the profit there still exists one inevitable problem:

You don’t own that list.

It’s unlikely to happen, but Facebook could shut down your page at any time. It’s happened in the past, and it could still happen. In the event that it happens, there are ways to reverse the decision, but the message is clear: you are not in control.

With an email list you own that list of emails that you’ve created, and the list has real equity to it if it’s well-targeted.

This reason alone is good enough to justify investing into your email list. Add in the profit and personal connection attached to email marketing and you’re only left with one question…

…is email marketing right for my industry?

The bottom line: email marketing is still extremely profitable, and until email addresses cease being an important part of our lives, it will continue to be relevant to digital marketers.