According to a 2021 Top Design Firm Study, about 50% of consumers believe that the design of a website critically contributes to its overall branding.
Investing in web design services might just be the key to improving your business' success. Whether it’s launching a brand-new website or redesigning an existing one, creating or refreshing your digital presence can help make all the difference for small businesses like yours.
If you're asking the question, "when is the right time for me to invest in a website?" the answer is: as soon as you possibly can.
The soonest is the perfect time to invest in web design services and create something that will impress customers, stand out from competitors, and provide more opportunities for growth.
What Web Design Services to Expect from Top Web Design Companies
In 2020, e-Commerce revenue reached almost 500 billion dollars. But did you know that 23% of small businesses still don't have a website today? Clearly, there are a lot of missed opportunities there. Now, let's say you've finally decided to go for it—find the ideal web design service provider for your small business.
The following are the standard services that you can expect to get:
- Web design and development: Web design and development is all about creating a visually appealing, user-friendly, and interactive web experience for customers. It involves researching the target audience of a small business, understanding their needs and preferences, as well as determining how best to present information in an engaging manner. This can involve anything from choosing colors, typography, images, and other visuals to ensuring they are aesthetically pleasing and cohesive. Additionally, developers must ensure a responsive design across different devices, browsers, and platforms.
- Local SEO: Local SEO is a must for every small business online. Good web design practices and optimization for search engines are often intertwined, as good web design should be designed with local SEO in mind. A website with a good structure and content that is easy to navigate helps search engine crawlers understand the page better, which in turn helps the page rank higher in local searches. Additionally, keywords should be included in the different sections and elements of a website in order to help boost its ranking.
- Branding: Branding is a critical element of effective web design as it helps to create an impactful and memorable online presence. It allows a small business to outshine competitors with personality, engage customers more deeply, and establish trust. When it comes to web design, branding should be an integral part of the design process. This means that every element of the website should feature consistent branding elements like colors, logos, fonts, and taglines.
If you're currently lacking in some of these areas, the more you should work with design agencies as soon as possible.
Teaming up with a digital agency to help with branding, search engine optimization, creating a modern web design, and other digital marketing services is something that every small business shouldn't set aside.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Web Design Services to a Small Business
If you're a small business owner, web design is likely one of the last things on your mind. On their own, your marketing and management depts. are already tough to deal with. But having a professional website, in today's digital economy, is non-negotiable. It serves as both an online storefront and a way to reach new customers.
Outsourcing web design services for your small business can:
Give you good quality work
Well-designed websites are easy to navigate, are aesthetically pleasing, and utilize current technologies to present, at its best, the company’s offerings. Even with outsourcing, these can all still be achieved with no compromise on quality.
All these are what web design experts focus on. Optimizing website content for search engines will also help to drive organic traffic. Expert web design services also ensure that your website is mobile-friendly to ensure that customers can access it from any device.
Help you leverage the skills of web design experts
Web design services allow small businesses to leverage the expertise of web design professionals. These experts are well-versed in the latest web design technologies, techniques, and trends, ensuring a website that meets user needs and expectations.
In addition, web design professionals can provide guidance on website security measures, ensuring that the business is protected from potential cyber-attacks.
Save you time and money
Outsourcing web design services for a small business, in general, can save you time and a lot of funds, as it allows small businesses to focus on their core activities while utilizing the services of a web design company.
Additionally, the use of a web design service provides access to industry design tools and tech while eliminating the need to hire an in-house marketing team, reducing overhead costs, and allowing the company to stay on budget.
Just because you're a small business doesn't mean you also have to go "small" in putting up a good face online. Investing in the right web design service can offer you these and more.
What Good Websites Do...
Have you ever opened a website and automatically liked it without exactly knowing why? Chances are, the website just simply did an excellent job in its design aspect.
A well-designed website can be so many things, but above all else, good websites ensure they offer and possess the following:
Effectively utilizes good design principles
The use of typography and colors is critical to creating a good website because they work together to create an overall structure that appeals to the users.
Typography contributes to this user experience by providing visual cues that help guide users through the site. While colors create a certain mood or feeling that can be used to effectively communicate with the user and evoke an emotional response.
Good websites achieve this by:
- Utilizing the color wheel as a guide for color theory
- Observing the proper hierarchy of headings, subheadings, and text bodies
Easy-to-navigate
In the same study we referenced above, web designers found that 42% of users bounce away from a site that's hard to use. This is why good websites should be easy to navigate and should support users in quickly identifying the various sections and content on a page.
Good websites have clear navigation labels so visitors can easily find and access the information they need without wasting time. Additionally, websites with shorter loading times, minimal clutter, and intuitive user experiences are generally deemed optimal.
Good websites achieve this by:
- Customizing their calls-to-action and CTA buttons
- Placing their navigation menus in strategic places on the site
- Using chatbots
Highlights the important parts
Web designers understand that prospects have limited time to spend on their page and need information as quickly and efficiently as possible.
To do this, they highlight important sections by making them stand out visually. This could mean using a larger font size, bold text, or a different color than the rest of the page.
Good websites achieve this by:
- Showing the steps and information that you want to know more about first on the "above-the-fold" portions of the site
- Eliminating unnecessary elements that add visual clutter to a website's "above-the-fold"
SEO (Search engine optimization) Best Practices
Good websites champion good search engine optimization practices by utilizing a variety of strategies that help them to stand out and be visible in SERPs.
Good websites achieve this by:
- Incorporating main and secondary keywords in key sections of the site like headings, CTA buttons, images, about pages, and meta descriptions
- Creating quality backlinks
- Social media integrations
Mobile-friendliness
Having a mobile-friendly website has become increasingly important in the digital world. Mobile devices are used more and more each day, with over half of all internet traffic being from smartphones and tablets.
Therefore, having a good website design that is optimized for mobile can ultimately make the user experience significantly easy and versatile for every potential customer.
Good websites achieve this by:
- Decreasing the loading time it takes to open the website on a phone
- Making sure that the site design doesn't crash or change on mobile
- Ensuring texts are legible on small mobile screens
Conclusion
A professionally made website is essential and should possess certain qualities in order to be effective. These qualities include effectively utilizing good design principles such as typography and colors, having an easy-to-navigate website, highlighting the important parts of the site, being search engine optimized, and being mobile-friendly.
Ultimately, these qualities help to create a good user experience and make your website more effective. If this sounds good to you, regardless of whether you're a small business, you should now start looking into what web design agencies can do for your business.
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