A website is the first thing that a potential client or customer sees. If you are running an online business, your website is almost like a storefront. However, it is much more than just aesthetics and beautiful designs. A good web design elevates the user experience and makes your website more likely to attract visitors. There are numerous elements to a good web design and it forms a central part of your branding efforts. Let’s find out more about why web development is such an integral part of online marketing.
Good web design helps in SEO
Anyone involved in digital marketing knows the importance of SEO, or search engine optimization. Your SEO performance determines how often people can find you through google search queries. A large part of SEO concerns content, keywords, plagiarism, and so on. However, many online business owners often forget how important web development is for SEO purposes. With a clean and legible website layout, the chances of the search engine crawling through your page and ranking it is much higher. On-page SEO is non-negotiable for any online business or service that wants to be more visible.
Conversion rate optimization
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, determines how often a visitor converts into a client. Website development and web design are the key components of conversion rate optimization. With the help of tools like session replay software and heatmaps, understanding the performance of web layout has become easier than ever. However, it remains important to create a website that is optimal for converting leads. The better your website design, the more people you are likely to convert. We experience this regularly in our personal lives. With websites that have a poor user interface, you are unlikely to spend a lot of time. On the contrary, a good website design is intuitive and naturally guides users from one step to the next.
Consistent branding
Without branding your business consistently across mediums, you cannot create positive brand awareness. Brand awareness can only be created when you have a unified theme and motif across mediums and channels. For example, if your social media presence does not have anything in common with your main website, it creates a disconnect between the users. You are likely to get higher bounce-back rates and branding will become much more difficult. Careful web development ensures that you maintain the commonality across marketing channels.
Building trust
In an age of cybercrime and spoofing websites, good web design is also about earning trust. If you have put together a few resources on a template and left them as they are, it will fail to earn your visitors’ trust. Some might even lose credibility in your brand altogether. It is a very expensive mistake to have a roughly put-together website. While hiring a web development company often seems to be out of budget for small businesses, the returns you would get pay themselves off. It is one of the smartest decisions you can take with respect to digital marketing.
Stay ahead of the curve
If you are not paying attention to web development and design, it would not stop your competitors from doing so. No matter what service or product you offer, there are bound to be rivals in the market. Sometimes, the difference between a client choosing you vs them lies in small web design elements. If your website does not have great navigability and user experience, people are not likely to choose you over your competitor with a better website. Pay attention to web development to not be crushed by the competition.
A website is a digital salesperson
In retail businesses, the front desk matters a lot. If customers do not have a good first impression or do not feel comfortable, they are much less likely to come back for more. In digital businesses, there is no single person interacting with the customers once they land at your web page. Instead, your website services the work of the front desk, customer support, PR, and a lot more. The more you invest in your web development, the better experience you give to your visitors. As a result, people are much more likely to have a positive experience and keep coming back. It will also help with word-of-mouth marketing and help you build credibility over time.
If your website is slow, unresponsive, difficult to navigate and so on, it is like dealing with an unskilled salesperson. You would be driving away people who are already interested in what you offer. It can compound over time and has the potential to significantly reduce the scale of your business. With a great website, the results would be the very opposite. You would earn trust, credibility, and more visitors over time. Considering the central importance of web development in digital marketing, it is one area where you should devote significant time and resources.
Conclusion
A website is not only a website. It is the face of your company and a digital representation of your values as a company. This is why it is crucial to have a good reflection of your company portrayed on your website.