In today’s society, a buyer’s journey, in most cases, will be largely online. If your website isn’t easy to navigate, looks dated, or just doesn’t work, consumers won’t spend another second on your site. Therefore it’s important to have a website that does what is required of it and works hard for your brand. Here we share what you need to take into consideration when figuring out how to choose a web design company.
When considering designing your new website, you will obviously be on the hunt for one of the best website design companies in the industry to gain some assurance that the website itself will be good. So what characteristics should you look for when deciding on a reliable web design company?
Take a look at the company’s past work examples. You’ll be able to gauge the quality of the work they’ll produce for you by the work already done for other clients. Check for any glitches, make sure it’s mobile compatible, how fast the pages load, how easy it is to navigate etc. If you’re unable to find the portfolio or past examples through the website or a Google search, just ask! If they have a good portfolio they’ll be proud to share it with you to tempt you into becoming a customer with them.
Whilst it’s by no means essential for a web design company to have won an award, we’d be lying if we said it didn’t help. It’s impressive! Awards are given to companies who’ve demonstrated both creativity and innovation as well as successes. Keep an eye out for any awards the web design company you’re considering has won and how recently they won as this can be a fantastic indicator of the quality of work they produce. The same goes for reviews. A company with amazing reviews will be the company you want to go for, as you only want the best for your business.
Unfortunately, you can’t just build your website and leave it at that. A website requires regular maintenance work and optimisation services to keep it running in peak condition. This is why it’s important to pick a reliable web design company that offers after-care services. If they don’t, it’ll usually mean that once your website has been built and gone live, you’re on your own. When you’re a busy business owner, this is less than ideal.
Once you know what makes an effective website, life gets a bit easier. If your website is lacking in any of the following areas, it may be time for a redesign or totally new website. So, what makes a company a top website design company?
Looks matter. A visually appealing website is more likely to attract people and keep them there. So an attractive colour scheme and layout should be key to your web design plan. Your colour scheme needs to reflect your brand. What colours do you use in your logo? Start there. Your layout shouldn’t be over complicated, as you don’t want to overwhelm or confuse a visitor to your website. Finally, the overall aesthetic should show your customers your brand’s identity and come across as a professional and credible company. You want to come across as fresh and up to date with trends, not dated and out of the loop.
Your website’s content must, first and foremost, be relevant to your business. If you are a cleaning business but have a landing page dedicated to high street fashion, even if your high street fashion content is well written, it won’t assist your website in terms of organic SEO! So ensure every piece of content on your website is relevant to the service or product you offer in order to get the most out of your website. When the content is written, ensure there are no spelling or grammatical errors as this comes off as unprofessional. Also write in a consistent tone of voice. What style you decide on is up to you. Whether you choose casual or authoritative, it needs to be consistent and the right choice to reflect your brand identity.
You want to encourage people to buy from you. If they’ve had zero interaction with you or your website before, why would they? Your website must be engaging and keep people interested so grab people’s attention with calls to action and interesting content.
When your website is working well, usability tends to be an element that goes unnoticed. However, if it doesn’t work well, you need to know about it. Usability is the bare minimum to expect out of a website. The user must be able to access any page listed on the website, have the pages load quickly, and know where they are at all times. The website itself should be intuitive, user friendly, mobile compatible, and easy to access and navigate. If it isn’t, users will leave your website and go to a competitor’s one instead.
You could have the most gorgeous, easy-to-use website, but if no one can find it, there’s no point having it! This is where SEO, amongst other elements such as social media, comes into play and is pretty much essential to ecommerce businesses. By understanding your target audience, buyer personas, platforms to target and, most importantly, how to be found, you can understand how to be visible on search engines. Decide on relevant keywords, topics to cover in your content and who you will want to target, before getting started on building your website. Click here for more visibility tips.
If you’re looking for an award-winning web design agency in Hertfordshire, get in touch with Cariad Marketing today!