If your website isn’t selling and advertising for you 24/7, it’s a liability.
In all our time spent working with top tier marketing professionals, we figured out a couple of things about your website that can genuinely make or break you.
Buckle up and let’s get going!
Table of Contents
Websites need strong branding
Your brand is NOT just about your colours and fonts. Your brand is an experience. Surely you’d want your customers and website users to FEEL like you’re the go-to solution provider in your niche?
If your website’s branding elements are inconsistent with the rest of your business (store, stationery, uniforms, billboards etc.), your customers will have a tough time making a connection between your company and the solutions you offer, in the moment they need it.
They’ll be looking for you on search or asking people for your details but if they don’t have the ability to recall your brand, it’s going to be a barrier to you making money.
Quality content is not negotiable
The second MUST-HAVE for your website is high-quality content. Don’t just slap some keywords on a page and call it an article.
You need content that makes sense, is useful and relatable for your target audience.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog post, a business page or your FAQ — quality counts at all times! Learn more about creating content for your website
What about SEO?
Yes, keywords matter, but not at the expense of your user experience.You can ask our team for help creating your website content and SEO strategy or go onto our website maintenance plan to help you keep your website’s digital infrastructure in tip-top shape and count towards your page rank. Here is a fantastic tool to help you find keywords for your business
Keep up with the times
A vintage look is better in the fashion world than on a website, trust us.
You need to align your website’s design with what works for your target audience.
For example, if you’re targeting senior citizens, you want a really simple interface with larger font that helps them read your content quite easily.
If you’re targeting children, you’ll want lots of colours with easy-to-recognise shapes and words, and possibly a dedicated page for parents.
Like with architecture and building design, website design has evolved and has gone through phases of its own. Search engines are scoring your website on how easy and effective it is to use so the cleaner and less cluttered your design, the better.
Know those buttons you see, like ‘Learn more’ or ‘Add to Cart’? Those are what we call ‘Call-To-Action’ buttons, or CTAs.
The best CTAs are unique and keep the conversation going while clearly telling your website user what kind of action they’re about to take.
You can go with the steady reliable examples mentioned above or really personalise the actions according to what kind of behaviour you want people to take on your website.
Here are some less common examples that you can try out on your website:
- Let’s talk
- Get in touch
- Check it out
- Ask us anything
- Get help
- Take a closer look
- Compare prices
- Compare products
You need high-quality images to support great website design . No half-product shots with unclear branding.
If you don’t know the technical ins and outs of creating good quality images, you can use tools like Canva or DALL-E to help you dress up your original images.
When you upload your final images to your website, remember to add in alt text. It’s a statement or caption that will load in case your image doesn’t, indicating to a user what’s actually in the image.
Alt text is a great vehicle for SEO but it has to be used properly; you can’t just stuff in some keywords and hope for the best. HINT: this is something else our team can help you with. schedule a call.
Is your website fully responsive?
A great website loads quickly and makes sense for a user regardless of the device screen size from which they are viewing it.
Have you tested your website from multiple screen sizes? We’re talking about everything from the smallest mobile device to the larger smart TV screen sizes used in office settings.
Here’s a VERY simple checklist you can use to determine whether your website is mobile-friendly:
- Are your text columns aligned with your images and/or videos?
- Your text and images should be legible on the handset.
- There should be no overlap between elements.
Making sure that your website displays the way it’s designed to is part of our website maintenance service that runs on a month-to-month basis for many of our clients. If you’d like help bringing your website back into shape, you can use our contact page to get in touch with us at any time.
Check your website contact forms
Collect only what you need for the purpose that a user is completing your website contact form (enquiry, purchase, competition entry, support ticket log).
Use hidden fields to track which forms are being submitted according to your campaign structures (especially if your landing pages live as part of your website).
Automate form submission data to arrive where you need it for managing sales, support queries or anything else your customers require. tools like Zapier are great to use for this.
Information management is becoming more and more important, meaning that you should have crystal clear website terms and conditions and a privacy policy that shows exactly what you do with the information that people submit to you and how they can request for it to be erased.
In short, your website is your always-on employee and it should be working for you 24/7.
Approach it with the respect that it deserves and invest in making it efficient and effective.
If this is something you need help with, use our contact page to reach out and ask us anything.
Peige 360 is a leading website design company based in Umhlanga Rocks, Durban, South Africa.
Related Stories
Learn how integrating Google reCAPTCHA into your WordPress site can enhance security, prevent spam, and ensure a seamless user experience. Discover the benefits and steps
Boost your e-commerce sales with custom website design, SEO optimisation, and secure payment integration. Learn how Peige 360 can elevate your online store!
