Mad Hat Maven Creative

Make a Web Design Work for Your Business

Customers these days like to make informed decisions. Studies show 70 – 80% of consumers take the time to research companies online before making a purchasing decision. That means checking out online reviews, social media presence, and of course, a company’s website. For many potential customers, a business’s website is an opportunity to peek inside a company’s culture, experience level and skillset. It’s a first impression and it needs to introduce your brand effectively.

Unfortunately, web design is trickier than it may seem. Sure, you can choose a template and throw some fancy phrases up there, but will Google find it? There’s more that goes into a website than simply pretty pages – it needs to engage from the back end to the front with optimized content, meta data and graphics and important tags. 

Let’s go over some essential strengths a website needs:

1. Clean User-Experience Design

Good web design always takes the customer’s perspective into account. If someone is viewing a website for the first time, can they easily find the product or service they want? Is making a purchase a quick and simple process? Is the contact information visible? A website journey map is a great web design tool for answering these questions. “Journey mapping provides a clear, clean path for the user, allowing for streamlined navigation.

2. Optimized Content 

Let’s face it: customers’ attention spans are short. People are coming to a website in search of quick answers to questions and to learn more about a product or service. If a web design includes too much irrelevant content or if there isn’t enough engaging information on the site, visitors may bounce quickly.

3. High Readability

A key part of web design that often gets overlooked is how easily viewers can read the content. Readability is affected by a lot of variables, from font size and color to the layout of your content. Are there big blocks of text that people will likely scroll right past, or is it broken down into lists or short paragraphs that are easily scanned? 

4. A Mobile-Friendly Design

A website might look great on a laptop or desktop computer, but that doesn’t mean it works on a mobile device effectively. The World Advertising Research Center (WARC) stated that an estimated 2 billion people access the internet from a smartphone. Many people are shopping from phones or tablet and prefer to navigate a clean mobile web design. In fact, one study showed that 57 percent of respondents wouldn’t recommend a company with a poorly designed mobile site. 

5. Quick Load Times

Online audiences have high expectations when it comes to website load times. Research shows that if a website takes more than three seconds to finish loading, 53 percent of mobile users will give up and move on. There are a lot of variables that can impact a website’s loading time and an experienced web developer can help improve it.

6. Driving Traffic

If you can’t find a website, most likely you won’t visit it. A clear website design and embedded content strategy provides organic rankings in search engines. Utilize Google Analytics, online ads and optimized content to help boost rankings online.  

With over a decade of digital experience, Mad Hat Maven offers web design and content strategy for a wide variety of industries at an affordable price. We can provide an audit of a current website and recommend a comprehensive strategy for improvements. Contact us to schedule a free initial consultation.

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