Every business needs a website. No successful business owners such as yourself have time to create their website. So, you turn to a website design agency to do the work for you.
Sounds simple, right?
The problem is that you can shell out a lot of cash and get nothing in return. A staggering amount of people promise to create a website that converts. But in the end product, the home page takes 10 seconds to load (and no visitors wait that long).
Not to mention, there are over 200,000 businesses that offer website design services in the United States.
You can find these website designers through:
- Search engines such as Google
- Freelancer platforms including Upwork and Fiverr
- Through word of mouth
Before contacting a website designer, look at reviews. Find positive reviews and the website that the review covers. That ensures that you’ll like the designer’s style. Not everyone agrees on what counts as a “good website.”
Once you’ve found a designer you like, you must check that they know the nuts and bolts of designing a reputable website. Ask them questions about the following 9 strategies and see what they say. This will give you clarity about:
#1: If they actually know what they’re doing.
#2: If they’ll provide you with a stunning website that clearly explains your services in a way that connects with the audience.
1. Use Consistency to Become Your Target Audience’s Go-to Brand
Customers must remember your website. You want them to come back again and again to make a purchase or consider your services. Make sure yours stands out with consistent branding elements. These are the items on your website that showcase your business, including the following:
- Logo
- Color scheme
- Fonts
- Backgrounds and images
All of these elements should be consistent throughout the website. This way, users know what to expect on each page. When a customer knows how to find what they’re looking for, it keeps them on your website longer. It also impresses your professionalism on your potential customers or clients, so they’re more likely to convert.
2. Utilize Visual Hierarchy to Make Pages Readable
Have you ever visited a website and hopped out of there real fast because every paragraph was a glob 20 lines long? Websites that have no structure have high bounce rates, which is the percentage of website visitors that leave after only viewing one page.
To prevent skyrocketing bounce rates, website designers implement visual hierarchy.
This means that you put the most important information in large text and legible colors. It should be the biggest and brightest on your website, drawing the reader’s attention.
Include relevant information beneath in smaller text so that visitors can choose to read that if it matters to them. If not, they can easily skip to the next chunk. Additionally, break down content into boxes and creative layouts so that readers don’t have to search through dense paragraphs.
This allows readers to pick and choose what they read based on what is important to them.
It’s a delicate balance between creating enough bold content to draw viewers, but not including too much to overwhelm them. Be sure to incorporate white space and a color scheme of neutral and bold hues to ensure your website doesn’t give visitors a headache.
3. Get Customers From Here to There With UX
UX design puts the user experience front and center. This means that a customer should be able to intuitively make a purchase, contact you for more information, or read a valuable blog post.
Every piece of your website, from the menu to the footer, should be created with your customer in mind. Map out user journeys to better understand how easy or hard it is for a person to complete each desired action on your website. An expert website design agency should complete testing to ensure each element is optimized for the UX by checking with real human beings, not AI.
4. Entertain for Free Through Interactive Design
The average American household spends $288.17/month on entertainment. So, give your customers something they want at no cost: entertainment! Keep your users engaged with interactive content on your website. The moving waves e9digital implemented for the Pasich LLP website offer a peaceful experience, evoking a feeling of serenity to the user. On the flip side, moving cars on e9digital’s site demonstrates that we’re constantly on the move to hustle for our clients.
Adding complex elements reduces the bounce rate from websites and promotes meaningful interactions, such as scrolling and clicks.
5. Don’t Forget a Call to Action
It might seem obvious to you what you’re selling, but your customers need a nudge. The call to action (CTA) encourages the website user to take action. This could be anything from a button that adds a coupon code to their cart or a “contact us” that takes them to a contact form.
The call to action may seem simple, but the design is key.
- Make it a button with contrasting colors so it’s easy to spot.
- Create a CTA with each section of your page. It’s okay to use more than one!
- Align the CTA in a noticeable spot. Don’t hide it somewhere like the footer.
The CTA should continue the train of thought from the rest of the design. Take a look at this CTA from e9digital’s client Freelance Writing Mastery.
Every freelance writer wants to make more money. Freelance Writing Mastery teaches them how to do it. So, the best CTA for their services is to “learn how” the program works. This simple promise is the hero headline of the page, and it reaches the emotional needs of the target audience.
6. Keep People Calm With White Space
We’ve all experienced a website that’s too busy. There are flashing images telling us to buy something, pop-ups for an exclusive offer, and minuscule text that just makes you more confused about the product. And then you never visit that website again!
White space (or negative space) is key to creating a professional, appealing website design. This is all blank areas between text, images, links, and more. White space creates a natural pause while reading. Lines and shapes are a great way to add color and texture to white space. They also allow the eyes to zero in on important text and make content more digestible.
7. Make it Easy to Find You On the Internet With SEO
You want a website for your business so that people can find you on the internet. The best way to make that happen is through search engine optimization (SEO). A website design strategy agency should have SEO experts on staff to choose keywords that match your brand.
When Google indexes your website, it will then start to rank your site for the matching keywords that people search. Google ranks websites based on their algorithm, which factors in elements such as relevancy, quality of content, and usability of webpages.
Matching a website’s SEO to Google’s algorithm is a complicated process. It requires a deep understanding of website development, such as
- XML sitemaps
- Mobile optimization
- Schema markups
- Pillar pages
- Core web vitals
8. Be Your Own Cheerleader and Promote Your Other Platforms
Your website should be the central hub for your business, but it’s probably not the only place people can find you. Add social buttons for your relevant platforms in the footer, menu, or other relevant places. If someone wants to keep tabs on your business but may not be ready to make a purchase, they can follow you instead.
Drive more traffic to your website with social sharing buttons. Every blog post you write should have a button that allows the reader to share it with their followers on Instagram, Facebook, X, etc in one click. This spreads the word about your website organically and creates backlinks for your helpful content on other websites.
9. Help People Trust You and Include Social Proof
Yes, you should be a cheerleader for your business. But people don’t believe businesses that say they have the best peanut butter.
They have to show that they have the best peanut butter.
The best way to do that is with social proof. On your website, include reviews from past customers about your products and services. If you need reviews, you can ask current clients for them or offer a reward for honest feedback, such as a 50% off coupon.
Custom Website Design Strategies at e9digital
Now that you know what your website needs, you can spend your money! To learn more about these topics, consider reaching out to e9digital. We’re a full-service website design and marketing agency that offers UX design, accessibility, and more. Don’t take our word for it—check out our happy clients who have benefitted from our work.
If you’re looking for a creative website that speaks to your target audience (AKA converts), contact e9digital to learn more about our website design services today.
