As a business, one of the most important assets at your disposal is your website. More often than not, it is the first glimpse into your business that potential customers have. It is the chance to make the first impression that you have been hoping for.
Far too many businesses attempt to take on the task themselves. Sure, there are a bunch of different do-it-yourself website builders out there to choose from. But the simple fact of the matter is that, most of the time, those look amateur at best.
The last thing that a business should want is for their website to come off as amateur-looking. This is why bringing in a professional design agency is of the utmost importance. It means tailoring that website, that first impression, to come off exactly as intended.
There are more than a few reasons why hiring a professional design agency is the way to go. Here are the most important reasons why.
User-Friendly Website
The single most important reason that you need a professional to tackle your website is because it has to be friendly to the end user. There have been plenty of great-looking websites over the years that have been an utter trainwreck to use.
The aesthetic of the website is just part of the equation. Ultimately, a website has to be easy to use so that users can get to where they want to go. If your website can’t meet that standard, visitors will click away faster than you can blink.
Don’t focus quite as much on the look as on the user experience. At the end of the day, a website that is functional is the most important thing.
SEO-Focused
Any website should have the goal of being SEO-friendly. SEO is the way that websites, regardless of the size of business, remain competitive within their space. You could be a huge company with a massive marketing budget and still struggle with SEO.
Hiring a professional means not only having an understanding as to what SEO is, but the importance that it can play for a business. It means putting the right keyword phrases where they need to go and ensuring that all SEO guidelines are met.
Having a beautiful website that fails to meet SEO standards is just as bad as creating a website that doesn’t work well for the end user.
Save Your Time
The reason why so many business owners go for one of those “out of the box” web design sites is because it is inexpensive. Saving money, especially as a small business, can sometimes overcome common sense.
The simple fact is that a website design professional does this for a living. They know the ins and the outs of the process. This means that, as the business owner, you can save time and focus on the other things that truly matter.
Far too many business owners have lost focus on the bigger picture because they spend so much time creating their own website. Leave it to the pros and you will have an investment that is worth the time and the money.
Keeping up with Trends
Web design is no different than most other things in that there are trends popping up all the time. Even if you just had your website designed six months ago, it can become obsolete well before that. This means having a design firm that knows the trends.
Working with a designer means that you can stay ahead of the curve. Whether that be from an aesthetic or functionality point of view, these professionals know what will work for a long time. It can be impossible to keep up on every trend ever, but staying ahead of the curve can be invaluable.
Web design is somewhat subjective, but there are certain trends that are worth following. A professional design firm knows of these trends and how to best implement them.
Proper Maintenance
One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make with their website is simply forgetting about it. Although it may seem like there’s nothing left to do but sit back and watch it generate money, there’s more to it than that.
No matter what the system or website is, it needs to be properly maintained. Checking on things, such as stock management and user registration, and ensuring new content creation is what keeps the great sites ahead of the curve.
Not to mention the fact that forgetting about your website is a great way to fall behind on the aforementioned trends. Make sure that you have a professional team working on your website even after the initial construction.
Keeps it Simple
It is important to make the experience as easy and fluid as possible for the end user. That means not leaving them looking for different payment methods or purchase options when they could click right through and get what they want.
Making sure that the website is not only functional but intuitive is a lot better than filling up a website with a ton of menus and options. A simple design means allowing users to get where they are going quicker, resulting in a more positive experience overall.
Not to mention the fact that a simply-constructed website can help with load times. When you have a slow-loading website, it can lead to user frustration, which ultimately sends them somewhere else. Simplicity isn’t necessarily sexy, but it can lead to better overall user satisfaction. That is what matters at the end of the day.
Optimize for Mobile
If your website isn’t optimized for mobile in this day and age, you are way behind the curve. With so many users now doing the bulk of their web surfing through their smartphone, it is a must to have proper mobile optimization.
Working with a professional means ensuring that your website is easily viewed on tablets, smartphones, and any other mobile platform. Without a properly optimized website, you could be missing out on a wave of traffic.
Websites that have designs that are similar to applications and offer greater fluidity tend to do the best regardless of what industry they fall in. Ensuring that your website is ready to take on mobile platforms is a must no matter what industry you happen to be in.
Brand Awareness
The best businesses try to tie everything that they do together into a neat little package. That neat little package is known as the brand. Branding is something that the biggest and most successful businesses around the globe do.
The crux of it all is that they hope to make their brands recognizable and linkable to an industry. When we think of cheeseburgers, we think of McDonald’s; when we think of computers, we think of Windows; and so on.
Having proper brand awareness can be what takes your business to the next level. Without that proper branding, it becomes a more difficult battle to establish an identity in a sea of competitors that are all attempting to do the same thing. With proper web design, you can set your brand apart and become something different where there are a thousand like-minded companies.
Search Engine Marketing
Having a website is kind of like having a storefront. Although it can help to have an attractive storefront that draws in the eyes of visitors, it is what happens behind the scenes that really drives the success of the business as a whole.
This is what search engine marketing is. Optimizing your website is great in theory, but if you don’t know what you’re marketing to or who, none of that really matters. This means making sure to manage social networks with frequency and providing the proper content for both your current followers as well as your target audience.
This is a great way to generate traffic and to reinforce links that lead back to your website. Using a professional design service can implement SEM best practices and work to create a more effective strategy for drawing visitors into your website. It can also streamline what can otherwise be a bit of a clunky process.
Aiming for Google
We talked a little about the importance of SEO above, but that was just glossing the surface. The simple fact of the matter is that hitting search engines (Google in particular) is what drives traffic and, ultimately, business to a website.
Without proper optimization, it means falling in the search engine rankings. When it comes to Google in particular, if you aren’t landing on the top page of search results, there is a really good chance that a customer will never see you.
Good SEO optimization can have a monumental impact on the whole. It means being seen in those search engine results, which makes you stand out above the competition. With the right web design, you can make sure that when your business is found by potential customers, they stay on your website instead of going somewhere else.
