We all know that a website is one of the most valuable assets of a company, but only if you make it that way. Well, 1 in 4 businesses still doesn't have a website, which is almost hard to believe at this point.
Luckily, that's good news for you, as it means you have less competition to worry about. However, you still need to beat the existing ones, and that takes proper web development. Let's talk about what a website needs to be successful and how you can improve your website today.
What a Website Needs To Be Successful in 2022
While there are thousands of things you can do to improve your website, no matter how great it is, some are more important than others. Essentially, two overarching pillars make a website great in this era. Let's talk about them.
UI/UX Design
User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are critical to the success of a website. UI refers to the aesthetic and design of your website, whereas UX refers to the experience users had from start to finish when interacting with your site. Proper UI and UX will include:
- Mobile-friendly design
- Fast load times
- Quality page structure
- Clean navigation system
- Limited errors and redirects
- Appropriate keyword usage
- Appealing design
Of course, the list goes on to include anything that may affect a user's opinion of your site. However, these are some of the most critical examples. If you're wondering how this affects your site, there is a reason that it's at the top of the list.
UI/UX determines the quality of your website, which is the home base and center of your entire digital presence. Think about it. Is there another asset of your company that directly impacts the effectiveness of your social media, SEO strategy, ad campaigns, email marketing, and other digital marketing tactics at the same level?
Moreover, most users spend their time on sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon, which are sites with enormous resources and state-of-the-art technology. Like it or not, they set the standards for the internet, and when your website doesn't hold up to these expectations, it won't perform as well.
Consequently, a quality UI/UX will ultimately lead to higher conversions on your email and ad campaigns as well as more leads from organic marketing strategies like social media and SEO.
Content Marketing Strategy
If your website doesn't have a content marketing strategy, then it may as well not exist in 2022. Without one, how is anybody supposed to find your website without specifically looking up your brand's name? Well, probably only through paid ads and other prompts.
Every website has at least three to five pages for its services, contact info, and other information. Because of this, there's a growing need for businesses to help their website content stand out. The best way to do that is through content marketing.
Without a doubt, the easiest way to get started is with a blog. Blogs are easily indexed by search engines and they offer you endless opportunities to rank on relevant search results, driving plenty of organic traffic.
Although, a blog isn't the only way to get started. Visual content like images, videos, or infographics is an excellent type of content that has less competition, same with podcasts and interactive content.
Our only advice is to keep everything relevant to your business and offer information that your target audience will search for. For example, a jewelry store could have content about "how to determine your ring size" or "a guide to the different types of earrings for different occasions".
From there, use a healthy mix of long-tail and short-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are words like "keywords", which will have high volume but a lot of competition, whereas long-tail keywords like "auto industry-related keywords" will have less competition, but also less traffic (albeit highly relevant traffic).
How To Improve Your Website
We went over the big issues that affect your site's lead generations and conversions, but it's not helpful if we don't talk about specifics. The good news is that if you want to boost organic traffic, your UI/UX and SEO go hand-in-hand on nearly everything.
That's right. Google (and other search engines) uses over 200 ranking factors specific to the quality of your website. They don't want to promote low-quality websites to their users, as that would reflect negatively on their search engine.
Consequently, everything that you implement on this list will ultimately boost the quality of your website, SEO value, lead generations, and conversions. If that doesn't convince you to improve your website, then nothing will. Nevertheless, here's what a website needs to be successful.
Focus On Quality
With your content marketing strategy and website design, the primary focus should be on quality rather than lead generation. Google's algorithm and your users both want to find quality content, and both will penalize you for lacking it.
Quality is the only way to ensure the long-lasting benefit of your website efforts, so don't add useless filler or fluff in hopes of gaining some easy leads. If you don't have something to say, it's best not to say anything at all.
Improve Page Loading Time
Get rid of junk code, optimize your images, and do whatever it takes to get your pages loading at optimal times. The average user will exit your site after just a couple of seconds if it doesn't load.
Use tools like Google Pagespeed Insights to help you understand the issues at hand and address them appropriately. This small step could significantly improve your bounce rate, increase leads, and boost conversions.
Develop a Clean Navigation System
Your bounce rate is an important metric to lower, but retaining your users beyond the landing page is equally important. If users don't know how to navigate through your site right away, it's unlikely they will stay for long.
Moreover, you should improve both your internal linking structure within your website's content and develop a clean navigation system for users to easily navigate through your site. Google will also appreciate this, as its crawlers need to easily navigate to index your site. Keep it as simple as possible to avoid any confusion.
Choose the Right Design
Your brand needs to be on full display throughout your website. There is no better place in the digital or physical world to develop and solidify a brand identity than on a website you fully control, so choose an aesthetically pleasing design that works with your brand's identity. Remember, keep it simple.
Visuals Win the Day
Make people stop their scrolling and be impressed. Our brains process visual content up to 60,000 times faster than text, making them far more captivating and engaging. Because of this, load every page of your website with quality information, but break up walls of text with images, infographics, GIFs, videos, and great templates or backgrounds.
Add Samples or Testimonials
Reviews, testimonials, a portfolio, or case studies; any of these will help you establish your site's credibility and showcase your strengths as a business. Adding a page for these goes above and beyond the standard "services" page and helps users get an idea of your past successes.
Add Calls to Action (CTAs)
Throughout your website content, you should always have CTA buttons or hyperlinks to help draw potential leads to the parts on your site where you want them to go. The end of every blog post is a great place to start, as it's easy to offer your services as a solution to their problem, but you can use these buttons anywhere. Like here:
Try Web Design Services
By looking for digital website design services near me, you can find the top website design companies in your area to help you through every step of the process. Unfortunately, in an industry dominated by tech giants, there is no DIY equivalent to professional site design services.
Whether you're looking for digital marketing integration, SEO value, or just a better design, Arkansas website designers can help you. The best part is that once your site is up and running, the leads will keep coming with only minimal upkeep.
Build a Lead Generator Today
Now that you know what a website needs to be successful, remember that the sooner you get started, the longer you will get to reap the rewards. A quality website is only becoming more and more important, so get on board while you still can. Stay up to date with the latest tips from iProv, and feel free to contact us with any questions!
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