How Important is Design in 2017?

When people look at incredibly successful companies like Apple, one of the questions they often ask is what separates this specific company from all of its competitors. In the case of Apple, one of the answers that most people agree with is design. For the last couple of decades, Apple has placed a huge emphasis on the design of everything it does. From the company’s products to their marketing efforts, Apple has a design aesthetic that’s unmistakable.

While it’s easy to write-off a company like Apple as an outlier, the importance of design can be seen across all kinds of companies. Even though they’ve only been around for a few years, startups like Casper have used design to make a big splash. And the positive impact of design isn’t limited to physical products. You can look across the landscape of software as a service (SaaS) companies and find plenty of newcomers that have been able to take significant share away from incumbents simply by putting more thought into the design of their user experiences.

Given the significant role that design can play, we want to go over a few more reasons why design is so important to businesses in 2017 and beyond:

It Sells

With a topic like design, it’s easy to get so into the theory of this practice that it seems too abstract to really move the needle for a business. Dispelling this feeling is part of why The Design Council conducted a thorough review of 63 FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) companies. Over the course of this decade-long study, The Design Council discovered that companies which prioritized design outperformed the FTSE 100 Index by an incredible two hundred percent. Based on these findings, every $100 invested in things like logo designing services would result in $225 in additional revenue.

Creates Trust

Multiple studies have found that when people visit a site with great design, they instantly trust it more than a site with poor design. While there are sites that have succeeded in spite of poor design, there’s no reason to put your business at this disadvantage when there’s a clear solution.

Brand Value and Retention

In an era when people are bombarded with more advertising and marketing messages than ever before, the value of branding only continues to increase. While branding encompasses more than just aesthetics, design plays an important role in this process. Creating a brand with a look that people respond to will increase how memorable your business is, as well as its overall value.

Now that you know more about exactly why design is so important, you may be wondering what this means for your business. Since great design isn’t something that happens overnight, it’s very useful to have an experienced team on your side. So if you’re looking for web design in Cincinnati or other graphics designing services, Web Strategy Plus is ready and able to take your design efforts to the next level.

Getting Visitors to Your Local Business Website

It’s important for a local business website to look great and load quickly. It’s also important for this type of site to be filled with quality content that will hold visitors’ attention. However, none of those factors are going to matter much if a site is the equivalent of an online ghost town. Given how much competition there is among local and all other businesses online, it’s no longer enough to simply have a great website. Instead, businesses need to have a clear strategy for driving visitors to their website. Since this is something businesses across a wide range of industries struggle with, we want to share some advice on what actually works for getting visitors to your local business website in 2017:

1. Tag Optimization

If you’ve done any research into search engine optimization services, you may have read that meta tags are no longer important. While there’s some truth to that statement, it actually overlooks something quite significant. Although Google doesn’t use the meta keyword tag in its ranking, both the title and description tags are used to determine what’s displayed when a business website shows up in search results. So being strategic about what you write in both of these tags can have an impact on your site’s ranking, as well as getting searchers to click your result instead of any others on the page.

2. Quality Citations

Citations are the term used to refer to links from directories. You’ll want to ensure you have citations from large directories like Yelp, as well as smaller directories that specialize in your industry. The citations you’ll want to claim and optimize include Google My Business, which is the current system that Google uses for the data it shows in the three-pack of results at the top of many local search pages. It’s also important for all of your citations to be correct and consistent across directories.

3. Online Reviews

Not only are online reviews another factor that Google takes into account, but what’s written about your business across the Internet can either drive meaningful amounts of visitors or prevent people from even considering your business. There are a variety of different ways to increase the number of online reviews your business gets without breaking any guidelines. You can also use the reviews you receive to enhance initiatives like landing pages and ultimately improve the effectiveness of things like PPC advertising services.

While implementing any or all of what we covered above will benefit your business, completing these tasks in-house can be a challenge. If you want to work with experienced providers of local SEO services who have a track record of success, the Web Strategy Plus team can help craft and implement a strategy that’s tailored to the specific needs of your business.

How to Improve a Business Website That’s Falling Short

In 2017, there’s no longer a question of whether or not businesses should have a website. Given that most people spend hours online each day, the benefits of having a website are clear. What isn’t always as clear is how to reap the full benefits that the right business website can provide. Plenty of businesses don’t see a meaningful increase to their bottom line despite having a website. Since this is a fairly common issue and one that has many causes, we want to highlight some of the best ways to improve a business website that isn’t living up to expectations:

Understand the Customer Journey

When someone visits a business website for the first time, it’s unlikely that they’re going to immediately make a purchase, request a free quote or schedule a consultation. Those types of activities require a high level of trust, which can be hard to establish when someone comes to your site for the first time. Overcoming this hurdle is why getting visitors’ email addresses continues to be so important for virtually all business websites. By using an email popup or overlay tool (this is something a WordPress development services can help you implement) and offering something of value in exchange for an address, you can start building a list. Then as people on the list interact with your business more through the emails you send, the likelihood of them becoming a customer will increase significantly.

Communicate Clearly

Your website will be many people’s first interaction with your business. Since many of these initial interactions may occur on pages other than your site’s home page, it’s important to audit your site to ensure that each page clearly communicates what your business is about and the value it has to offer.

Look for Shortcomings

Even with a free tool like Google Analytics, you can get a lot of detailed information about what people are doing on your website. This type of tool makes it easy to spot pages that are performing below the average of the rest of your site. If you discover that certain problems are being caused by technical issues with your website, a web development company can help solve them. The same is true for removing unnecessary elements of a page that are distracting visitors from its core purpose.

Consistently Produce Compelling Content

Because the Internet has become such a busy place, it’s no longer enough to create a small business website and then leave it untouched. Your site needs to be consistently updated with new content that’s relevant and valuable to the type of people you want as customers.

If you’re in need of small business web design services to take your site from floundering to thriving, Web Strategy Plus has an expert team that can help.