Websites can play a huge role in whether a business is successful or not. Customers are spending much more time shopping on the internet than they’ve ever done in the past, so it’s important that your website stands out and can be found if you want to be able to compete with the competition. Your website is often one of the main places your customers interact with your business. Most of your offline and online marketing strategies will send customers to your website. Whether it’s to make bookings or purchases, to get information about your business or to get contact details.
You might have an amazing marketing campaign, only to be let down by the number of sales because your website doesn’t convert. There are a number of reasons why a website could underperform, including responsiveness, site speed or navigation ease. Businesses need to understand how important their website is to their marketing strategy. Keep reading below to find out a bit more about why your website is crucial to your marketing strategy and how to improve it:
Review Your Website
It’s a good idea to start by reviewing your website. You should keep the following information in mind:
- Conversion rate – are you converting leads?
- Branding – is your brand image reflected in your website?
- Competition – is your website as good as your competitors?
- SEO – how well do you rank in the search engines?
- Site speed – do your pages take a long time to load?
- Responsiveness – is your site responsive to customers?
If your site isn’t getting the sales you’re looking for then it might be time to redesign your website. The Guerrilla Agency can help you increase your business through value-based, strategic marketing.
Redesign Your Website
Many businesses will find that their website is not up to scratch. If this is the case, then you will want to re-design it. Before doing so, you need to think about the following factors:
- The audience – you need to identify who your target audience is and then build a site that suits their needs. Spend some time learning what your target audience is looking for. It’s a good idea to try some designs on your original site before making a drastic change.
- Know the goals of your website – you need to work out what the purpose of your website is. Your digital marketing strategy needs to set out your objectives. These could include sales, lead generation or brand awareness.
- SEO (Search engine optimization) – Search engine optimization is important to help businesses be more visible on search engines. Evidence suggests that 93% of all online activity begins on a search engine, so it’s important that your business can easily be found.
- CRO (Conversion rate optimization) – Your website needs to be designed to drive users to calls to action. A conversion doesn’t always have to be a customer purchasing a product.
Your Website Content:
Second only to the design and user experience is your website content. Nobody’s going to stick around for very long on a website that has nothing interesting on it. On the other hand, nobody is going to be interested in a site that’s got far too much content and long blocks of text. It’s a fine line, and getting it just right is crucial.
Before you start designing or redesigning your website, think about the content that you’re going to display, and where it’s going to appear. This will help you choose the right design for your site and make sure that your design and content are working well together.
Website Copywriting:
The copy on your website is ultimately what’s going to spark the interest of your visitors or not. You can have the best, most expensive, and most modern website design in the world but if what you’re saying isn’t very interesting, it’s going to be hard to convince somebody to buy from your site or get in touch to sign up for your services. Headlines are the most crucial part of your site’s copywriting, as they stand out and grab attention straight away. What’s the first thing that people read when they land on your website? If it’s not interesting, unique, and intriguing, you’re going to have a hard time keeping them on your site to learn more.
After headlines, review your calls to action. You want something short and snappy that intrigues the viewer to sign up, register or buy.
Images, Graphics, Animations, and Video:
The visual content that you use on your website is blended with both the design and the message you want to get across. Yes, images, graphics, and videos do play a major role in making your site look pretty, but they’re also especially important for marketing.
Your hero image has the biggest impact: Also known as a ‘header’ image, it’s the first image that people see when they land on your homepage. Some popular options include:
- Background patterns and colors: These make your headline really stand out as the star of the show; ideal if you’ve got fantastic copywriting that you want to draw attention to.
- Animations and vector graphics: These are trending massively in web design right now and give your site a cool, modern edge. Be sure to choose a graphic or animation that clearly explains what you do. Check out unDraw for some inspiration and free downloadable SVG files you can use.
- Photos: High-quality photographs are a tried and tested option. If you’re an eCommerce website, you can display a photo of your best-selling product – or even better, somebody using it. Make sure that it conveys a message to your viewers.
- Video: Using a video as your hero adds some life to your site and tells a story to the viewer. Some rules to keep in mind include: Don’t set to autoplay – or at the very least make sound optional. Keep it short and to the point. Optimize the video, or embed it from YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia to make sure it doesn’t impact website speed.
Other Factors to Consider
When re-designing your website, you should also take into account these factors:
- User experience – A good website needs to be accessible, easy to use, and worthwhile for the customer.
- Brand identity – Brand image can play a huge role in whether a business is successful or not. First impressions are extremely important. Brand identity builds trust between your business and your customers and it will play a role in their decision-making.
As with all marketing strategies, you need to spend some time reviewing what you already have in place. Websites need to continually evolve in order to continue meeting customer’s needs and wants. Most businesses want a website to be profitable, which means you need to understand where your website can be improved and where it is performing well. A good website is extremely important to your marketing strategy.
