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.