Did you know that the appearance and structure of a physical store can influence people to buy more? Buyers are influenced by cleanliness, ease of movement, lighting, and background music. It’s the same as your online store.
Web design marketing is the use of your website to promote your products and services. A good web design can increase the number of times people visit your website. Web design marketing is one of the categories of digital marketing. And it has goals such as 1) increasing the amount of time visitors spend on your website and 2) encouraging visitors to buy your products or services, among others.
Ways Your Website Can Help With Marketing
Branding
One of the steps in developing a brand is developing a brand identity. A brand identity is how you present your brand to your target audience. It entails the use of your logo, colour, font, icon, voice, packaging, website, and so on. The goal is to help people distinguish your brand from competitors.
As previously stated, your website is an extension of your brand’s identity. A visually appealing and simple-to-use website reinforces positive brand images. Your company’s brand is its personality. Whiles marketing is the promotion of a company/brand.
You’d like to hang out with some people. Others, on the other hand, you avoided. It is the same with using your website to communicate your brand.
It is simple to promote a company with a strong brand. Your website can help you with the following aspects of your marketing strategy:
Credibility: People will check your credibility by visiting your website. Having a website is beneficial to your business. Because having no website can make your company appear untrustworthy.
You have not even begun this game if you do not have a website. Your competitors’ websites can also be used to steal your customers.
Design: The design of your website should convey your brand. If it does, it is an excellent marketing strategy in and of itself. Many internet users’ first point of contact may be your website. And if it makes a favourable impression on them, you will gain valuable points.
Content: Your digital assets are the contents of your website (for example, a blog, videos, ebooks, and so on). When you create good content for your website, you establish yourself as an authority in your field. People will perceive your brand as an expert in your industry’s subject matter.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of designing your website so that it appears high on search engine results pages. SEO is what makes your website appear on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search results pages. SEO is a free way of getting traffic from search engines. There is no need to pay for SEO traffic. However, you must incorporate its components into the design of your website.
SEO includes elements such as Meta description, Alt tags, and keywords.
Meta Title: This is the title of your website’s pages and posts as they appear in search engines.
Meta description: These are the two or three lines that describe your page or post. They typically appear beneath the Meta Title in search results. Relevant meta titles and/or descriptions can entice people to click on your page’s link in the search results.
Keyword or Key phrase: This is the main word or phrase a website’s page or post is about. When people go on Google, they enter words or phrases. The keywords or key phrases they type may match those on your page or post. When this happens your page or post will appear in their search results.
Alt Attributes: These are the descriptions you give to the images you attach to the pages or posts of your website.
Links: You can have both internal and external links. Internal links direct visitors to other areas of your website. However, external links take them to other websites. These two factors, plus when someone links to a section of your website, are required for good SEO.
Data
Your website can help your marketing by providing you with data. Data is a valuable asset. You need data to plan your marketing. Website analytics are the sources of such information. Google Analytics is one example. They can provide you with information about your current and prospective customers. Such data include their location, age, gender, devices, browser apps, and so forth.
Analytics data can also tell you the following:
1) the words or phrases people are using to find your website,
2) the times of the day they visit your website,
3) the length of time they spend on the site,
4) the posts or pages of the website they are most interested in,
5) the social media channels they use to visit your website,
6) the number of new and returning visitors.
With such information, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your prospective and current customers. Specifically, their interests, behaviour, and demographics. As a result, you will not plan your marketing blindly. However, you will be able to do so with data-backed decisions.
Elements of a Good Web Design
You must go through a web design process with your web designer. Certain things should never be overlooked during the process. Because they are components that make a website effective for marketing.
Navigation
Have you ever gotten lost before? How was the experience? One day a police officer stopped and asked me for directions from USPA to Madina market. He was keen on taking the route that will not make him make many turns. And that’s the one I pointed to him, although he had to turn back to take that route. The fact that he is a police officer doesn’t mean he has a GPS in his head.
The same is true for website visitors. Don’t expect them to navigate your website easily. Users who visit your website may become disoriented. And will have no idea where they are on your site.
Website navigation assists users in the following ways: By knowing
1) where they are on your website,
2) how they can go back,
3) how to scroll to the top, and
4) how to find their way to other parts of your website.
Responsive Design
A responsive website is one that can be viewed properly on all devices. People use various devices to connect to the internet (mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc). Each device has its own screen size. As a result, the same web pages must shrink or expand to fit the various screen sizes. Only websites with responsive designs can do this. Because they respond well to different screen sizes.
Most importantly, people now prefer to access websites via mobile devices rather than desktop computers. As a result, there is an urgent need to concentrate on mobile devices. This can be accomplished by selecting mobile-friendly web design templates. Alternatively, you can create a mobile version of your website for mobile users. You can use Google’s Mobile Friendliness Test to check your website’s mobile friendliness.
Website Speed
Your web pages should load quickly. A slow website can turn off visitors. A fast website, on the other hand, will increase your chances of receiving more traffic. People may not see your great content if your website is slow. Because they may close your website if it takes too long to load.
You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your website’s speed. It will diagnose your website and give you recommendations. You will need your web designer to help you put in place the actions to take.
Security
When you build your house, you will do everything possible to keep thieves out. They might show up. However, your security measures will prevent them from stealing from you. This is also true when creating a website. You should safeguard your website against hackers and cyber-attacks.
Purchasing a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is the way to do this. Putting the technical jargon aside, a web address that begins with an HTTPS is secure. The “S” is what shows that it is secure. So if the “S” is not there (e.g. HTTP), then it is unsafe.
In addition, if your website is secure, you will notice a padlock icon next to its name in the address bar. Your website is not secure if the icon is not a padlock. There are three security icons for a website. Each has its own significance. Use this link to know what each means.
Moreover, Google does not show websites that are not secured in their search results. And if your website becomes the place where people lose their confidential personal and financial data to hackers, it will crush your brand. A secure website proves that you care about your customers/visitors.
A website is different from an email. However, the two are connected. You should have an email address that is personalized with your web address. For example, our email for enquiries is bisa@ghanayellowpages.com. “Bisa” is the Akan word for ask, which can be interpreted as seeking information.
When you have an email address created from your web address, it makes your emails look genuine. You can use your website to collect emails. And use your company email to do email marketing.
Search engines
Another element of a good web design is that it appears on search engines. You have to add your website to search engines. Before they will start showing your pages in their results.
This is how to check whether Google has indexed your website or not. Open Google search and type the following: site:yourwebsiteaddress.com. For example, site:ghanayellowpages.com. If Google has added your website to its library, your website will show up.
Use Google Search Engine and Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your website to the various search engines.
Conclusion
Your website is critical to your marketing strategy. It can help your company reach its objectives. Most importantly, you need good web designers who can create websites that will help you with your online marketing strategy. If you need a professional web designer, please contact us at bisa@ghanayelowpages.com. We have one-page websites for small businesses and multi-page websites for medium and large businesses.
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