Web SEO Marketing
Small and medium-size businesses are faced with challenges every day, and one of the most critical for many of them is constructing a new website or revising an existing site to improve their online presence. Today, there are over one billion websites, which means there is a great deal of competition for every consumer seeking goods or services online. It also means websites need to provide what potential clients want, but they must also do it in a way that meets the demands of search engines.
Why Is It Important to Work With Vermont Web Marketing to Design a Website?
While there are website templates easily obtainable, they rarely meet the needs of companies looking for quality rankings on the various search engines. Templates are touted as the easiest way to get a website up and running and that may, in fact, be true. However, having a website no one will see is not really all that useful. Business owners looking to garner solid returns from their websites need more. They need a well-designed page that not only gets attention but also results in sales.
What Steps are Necessary When Developing a Quality Website?
Before beginning an actual design, the Vermont Web Marketing team will work with each client to establish or refine their short- and long-term goals. Understanding where a company wants to go defines the strategies employed to reach those goals. Since things invariably evolve over time, the site will always have the capability of being updated to implement those changes.
Next, the purpose of the site must be clearly established. A purely informational site, for example, won’t contain the same elements as a site engaged in e-commerce. Knowing the purpose allows our design team to focus on what’s truly important and also goes a long way toward meeting the requirements of Google or the other search engines when they rank sites.
Once the purpose is defined, we can work on some of the basics of the site. A content management system, or CMS, will need to be selected. Deciding how the site will be structured is also important at this point. Since each site’s needs will be different, the design will be customized to reflect those organization-specific requirements. Website owners using templates don’t have the options clients working with us enjoy and have limited choices for the construction of their sites.
What Characteristics are Included in the Best Website Designs?
Every one of the top websites will have a design presenting the materials necessary for the site owner to succeed, but those sites also make it easy for clients to navigate the site’s pages. A lot of that convenience is related to the CMS used, but we still takes steps to make sure the site loads quickly and, when clients click on tabs or links within the site, the navigation is intuitive.
Internal and external links must always function properly. We’ll make it a point to verify every function of a website works as intended. Site visitors quickly move on to competitors’ websites if functions within a site don’t work properly.
Of course, the site has to be attractive. Clumsily designed sites that are cluttered or lack flair rarely succeed in today’s complex marketing environment. We understand how a visually attractive site encourages visitors to stay on the site and, arguably more important, come back again.
Organization is important, as online shoppers rarely stay on a site where they can’t find what they need and check out quickly when they’ve decided to buy. Every portion of the buying experience must be convenient and intuitive for the customer or the site owner risks losing the client to a competitor.
What Types of Content are Important?
Simply put, everything should be important. If the content doesn’t promote the product or service in some relevant way, it shouldn’t be included. One thing often ignored is updating contact information. When a phone number or physical address change, for example, those changes should be updated on the website immediately. When employee names are used on the site, those names and positions should be constantly updated. Customers want to know who they’re dealing with, and when information is outdated, they tend to lose confidence in a company quickly.
The content included on any website should be clear and concise. That means getting rid of unnecessary verbiage is important. Customers want the facts without a lot of flowery or overly-complex language. Site owners should know who their customers are and present the information in language that demographic group is comfortable with. Remember, the average person in this country reads and comprehends language written at roughly a sixth-grade level. On the other hand, websites designed to attract top executives and other professionals may well use much more sophisticated language. Tailor the writing to the site’s target market.
Today’s trends lean toward using more videos and other graphics on sites. Industry experts suggest most viewers are more willing to watch a short video than they are to read a lengthy description of a product or service. Pictures are also recommended to illustrate what is being described. However, any videos or pictures must be of high quality. Videos taken using a smartphone or casual snapshots are not generally going to garner the same responses as professionally produced ones will.
