If you know one thing about the internet, you know that it’s big. Well, it’s only getting bigger, and whether you believe it or not, over half a million websites are launched every single day.
With so many sites out there, having a professional website has never been more important, especially if you’re running a small business. Let’s talk about web design for local business and how your company can benefit from it!
Why Web Design For Local Business Is Important
Every website could improve on its design, but the worst business website is the one that doesn’t exist. In today’s world, your business needs a website.
If you’re running a local business, you have less competition than some other companies online. If you’re selling an app, or you run a news company or something like that, you have to face off with competitors all around the world. This is where local businesses have a big advantage.
Many local businesses don’t understand the benefits of proper web design, which is excellent news for you! That only makes it easier to compete with them and wind up ahead.
Proper web design can help you stay ahead of the competition by appearing more professional, creating less of a hassle for the customer, and being easily accessible to them. Many local businesses don’t even have a website, and simply rely on their presence on Google, Facebook, or Yelp for their online presence. This is a huge mistake.
Your website should act as your home base to anybody seeking out your information, finding you on social media, or seeing one of your advertisements. You should be drawing people into your website first and from there, draw them in for a sale.
In the digital age, there are plenty of options for designing a website. Let’s talk about them.
DIY Web Design
It’s tempting to try to build a website yourself. If you’re running a business, you’re probably already spending money on advertisements and other marketing techniques, so you probably want to save money on building a website.
Well, your website is the center for your entire online presence. Everything you’re attempting to do online should be to draw an audience to your online “home base”.
In today’s world, people are used to using websites like Facebook, Amazon, Google, and other big websites with a professional design that’s simply top-notch. Because of this, they can typically smell a DIY website from a mile away.
Sure, there are online web design tools that market themselves as being easy to use and create professional results, but the truth is that they still come up short and stick out. Not to mention, it will literally be branded at the bottom of your site forever. Any user will be able to see “Created by —” at the bottom of every page on your site, only confirming their suspicion.
However, if you do decide to go that route, be prepared to spend many hours working on it, and do your research on how to get the best bang for your buck. Remember, those tools are not free, and may even cost you more in the longrun, as they usually require a subscription.
Professional Web Design
Unless you have serious training in web development, a DIY website will never truly stack up to one that is professionally designed.
There are so many benefits to professional web design, and you’d be surprised how affordable it can be. Here are just a few of the major benefits you’ll get for your business website.
Brand Identity
If you have a brand, your website is the best place to display it. Whether it’s a corporate brand or your own personal brand, what you show people will create a visual brand identity. If it’s all uniform, they’ll be able to spot it from across the street.
Let’s paint a word picture. You open your laptop, you see a white screen, and in the middle is big, colorful lettering. Those letters are blue, yellow, red, and green. What website are you on?
Google has created such a strong visual brand identity that you don’t even need to see it to recognize it immediately. Your website, with the proper graphic design, can do the same for your brand. This is great for building brand recognition and loyalty among your customers, especially if the visual identity you portray is appealing.
Unfortunately, the same is true for the opposite. If a website looks poorly designed, is difficult to use, or has an unappealing color scheme, this is what customers will associate your brand with.
Increase Ad Efficiency
One of the most important factors to a successful ad campaign is the landing page. Your landing page is the page on your website that people who click on your ad will see first. Whether it’s a display ad, video ad, or search ad, it’s the first impression you’ll make after they click on it.
If you are paying for a PPC ad campaign, you’re losing money every time that a click doesn’t turn into a sale. Well, with the right web design, you can significantly increase your conversion rates.
Think about it. An ad may have caught your attention. However, if you click on it and the page takes a while to load, you can’t navigate through the menu easily, and you don’t see information relevant on the page, what are you going to do?
Believe it or not, 53% of mobile users will abandon a site if it doesn’t load within a mere 3 seconds. Having a high-speed, user-friendly website with a professional appearance will be the key to improving your ad campaigns conversion rates.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the hottest thing in marketing these days, and for very good reasons. It is arguably the most effective tool in marketing in this time period, as it increases organic traffic.
Organic traffic is traffic that was brought without an advertisement. You didn’t put the information in front of somebody, they sought it out. Think about how important that is. Are you more likely to buy shoes from one of the thousands of ads you’ve seen today, or when your shoes rip and you search for new shoes?
Organic traffic is believed to account for 40% of today’s revenue across all companies, so anything that can be done to optimize your website will be great. Remember, your site is the bridge that connects your entire digital marketing strategy. That includes your ad campaigns, SEO, social media, email campaigns, and more.
The best part is that, for local businesses, the competition is a lot easier. If you’re starting an eCommerce store, you have to compete with thousands of others, including Amazon and Walmart. If you’re a local pizza shop, you’re only competing with other local pizza shops, making it a lot easier to rank at the top. Web design could be the difference between ranking first or 5th, and here’s how.
Blog
Every company needs a blog. Not only are you forfeiting the competition without a blog, you never even entered the game. There are two simple reasons for this.
The first is that people search for information, which a blog offers. If you make relevant titles and provide useful information for each topic, you will rank higher on Google and get more traffic to your site.
The second is that you are increasing your chances of ranking highly on a Google search with every single blog post. You may have 10 total pages on your site for “about us”, “contact us”, “home”, and a few others. That gives you 10 opportunities to rank highly.
Every post gives you another opportunity, and it only takes one successful one to get your sales booming. What this means is that if you own an autobody shop, you have thousands of opportunities to rank highly by posting relevant information that people may seek out.
Let’s pick a city for your autobody shop. Say it’s Nashua, New Hampshire. Some example blog titles would be: “Window Tint Laws in Nashua New Hampshire”, “Best Accident Repairs In Nashua”, or “Where To Find A New Bumper In Southern New Hampshire”.
For each article, use the proper keywords that people will search for, draw them in, give them the information they need, and direct them to your services at the end of the article. A Blog is a business owner’s best friend.
User-Friendliness
Google’s algorithm takes a lot of things into account when considering how users will think of a website they are putting in front of them. They take things like page speed and website navigation into account. While you may not know how to improve your website’s speed or navigation tools, the right web design company will.
It will also help with creating repeat customers and building customer loyalty. Nobody wants to interact with a difficult site, as they only cause frustration. Again, when we’re used to using Google and Facebook all day, we generally expect other websites to live up to the same standards.
Mobile-Friendliness
Mobile-friendliness is a huge factor in Google’s algorithm. The reason this is such a big factor is that 56% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices like smart phones or tablets.
Google ranks you based on how your page is designed for mobile users. This includes fitting the page to the screen, easy navigation tools, and more. The good news for you likelihood of every local competitor having stellar user-friendliness is slim, so this could be what sets your place at the top.
Pages
The same logic that applies to a blog applies to pages across the board on your site. Let’s say you sell light fixtures. The right web design company can create pages for all your different products, their information, customer reviews, and more.
Again, the more pages you have, the more opportunities you have to rank higher. However, the quality of your pages is just as important to the algorithm and customers. It also gives you more opportunities for other sites to spot and link directly to your products, which increases your backlinks. Backlinks are links from other sites to yours, and they are one of the most important factors in Google’s algorithm.
If you’re unfamiliar with SEO, it really is important, so be sure to learn about what it does for your website. It’s a relatively new tool, but one you really need to understand in order to compete. Showing up on the first page of a Google search instead of the second can literally be the difference between your business sinking or swimming.
ROI
Your return on investment is bound to be higher with professional web design than with DIY. All the reasons listed above show why professional web design will increase your revenue, and redesigning your site will ultimately have a better ROI.
As we said, DIY site-builders typically require subscriptions, which are a drain on your money over time, and don’t provide the same results. If done poorly, this only creates a money sink.
Build Your Base!
Now that you know why professional web design for local businesses is so important, it’s time to build your home base. Any company, no matter how small, will benefit from proper web design.
Get your new site up and running, watch that revenue grow, keep up to date with our latest digital marketing news, and be sure to check out our professional web design services!
