Estimated reading time: 4 mins
Designer websites have been embraced entirely by big businesses. But nowadays, even smaller businesses are beginning to understand the importance of a fresh, modern website that is appealing to potential customers. That needn’t be hard to achieve, even on a small budget.
It’s certainly no secret that online has proved, and is continuing to prove, the key to the success of many small businesses. While for many years an online presence alone was enough to ensure success for a small business, today’s world is driven by online.
Many small business owners are now understanding that in order to continue succeeding in this increasingly digital world, they need to have more than just a functional website. They need a web designer that can truly help evolve the look and feel of their website. This includes everything from film video multimedia productions that showcase your business at its best to compelling content that engages an audience.
After all, is your website responsive? Most people arriving at your website today will be visiting from mobile and tablet screens. Is your website displaying correctly for them? Are you losing customers because of this? But even having a great-looking web design isn’t the only key to success; finding a great designer who is also able to help your business achieve results is increasingly important. It’s why those small business owners looking to re-build their website need to find a developer that understands the importance of online marketing, eCommerce and constantly refreshed content, to name but a few priorities.
Fluid Websites On A Smaller Budget
Affordable web design is something companies expect. However, some businesses still don’t take professional web design seriously, nor appreciate the importance of good web design in generating digital business revenue and leads. For this reason, they simply seek the cheapest design options.
Like everything when it comes to business, though, we get what we pay for. So can you get a high-quality site without breaking the bank? As with anything, it is possible to find the right blend of affordability and quality when it comes to web design. One way many companies can save on web design and development costs is by investing in responsive pages – a new design industry standard.
A responsive website is a site design that works across all PCs and mobile devices, scaling up or down depending on the user’s screen size. But why should this be more affordable? Well, in the past, to achieve readability, both a mobile version and a desktop version had to be designed to account for different screen sizes. Now, instead of paying for two designs for your website, you will pay for just one.
Responsive design pages are the most fluid pages you will find on the web today. Making your products and services easily accessible to potential customers, no matter whether they are viewing your site on a mobile, a laptop or a tablet, will pay dividends in terms of return on investment. But even responsive sites can go wrong if you don’t invest appropriately in your web design services company.
Getting Navigation Right On Your Website
The structure, appearance and navigation of your website are crucial for several reasons. Firstly Google search rankings and SERPs’ (search engine results pages) are affected by and promote websites with easier to navigate structures and secondly consumers avoid badly built websites.
Today, website design and structure is not easy for any business. Firstly, ditch the slideshow or carousel. When these came into fashion a few years ago it was seen as a way to display lots of information on your website’s homepage or landing pages. The difficulty is that most visitors don’t stay on the page long enough to see all of the tiles. Further, the messages and images in the carousel usually aren’t relevant to a prospect’s first visit. Think about the one thing a new visitor should take away from your site. Promote that one thing, perhaps a good or service your business provides then ditch the rest.
Next, simplify your website’s navigation. It might sound counterintuitive to limit visitors’ options. However, rather than overwhelming visitors, if done well, it can help guide visitors to your most useful or highest converting content. Try to eliminate dropdown menus and multi-tier dropdowns as most visitors won’t navigate their way through them. If possible go a step further and reduce the number of links in your header and sidebars. Lastly, try to eliminate sidebars in general. Sidebars have been popular on blogs and websites for years. Today companies are finding that removing sidebars from blogs encourages reader attention to the article they are reading and higher conversion rates on the call to action at the end.
