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How to Use Website Design to Drive Digital Marketing

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Website Design|How to Use Website Design to Drive Digital MarketingWhile the majority of business owners are aware of the importance of digital marketing, many lack the technical know-how to fully comprehend the extent to which a successful digital marketing strategy relies upon website design. A well-designed website is one that can be trusted, not just by customers, but by search engines too. Without this trust and navigability, the potential of any digital marketing campaign will be severely limited.

Why Web Design and Digital Marketing are Inextricably Linked

There seems to be an obvious answer to this question: customers won’t want to spend time on a poorly designed site. While this is true, there is much more to it. Awareness of the extent to which a website affects marketing comes from focusing on how a customer arrives at the site. Of course, a website design must facilitate an enjoyable customer experience, but in order for this to happen a website must be accessible, otherwise, all efforts are futile.

While there are some tweaks that can be performed in-house, consulting a website design company that specializes in marketing, such as The Gist, is the best way to ensure a site is fully optimized and complements your wider marketing strategy. Optimized design has a big impact on the website’s potential search engine rankings. The list below outlines some areas of focus.

Loading Speeds

Search engines are businesses looking to provide the best product to their users. This is particularly apparent when considering loading speeds. Take Google as an example: their research has shown that the average user expects a site to load in less than three seconds… otherwise they consider leaving.

Google has repeatedly stated the importance of loading speeds for high search engine rankings and they are set to continue prioritizing websites that have fast loading speeds. A good agency will know how to compress code, use the right images and make little tweaks to boost speed and retain users.

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Navigation

A study from the Stanford Technology Lab found 46.1% of participants judged a website’s credibility on factors such as visual design, layout, typography, font size, and color schemes. While the overall aesthetic of a website is very important, there is one particular aspect that is necessary to achieve a high search engine ranking: navigation.

Navigation links inform search engine crawlers which pages are the site’s most important and provide them with an easy way to access these pages. There are many different navigation tools available: drop-down menus, double navigation bars, and single navigation bars being the most common. Having descriptive titles a good robots.txt and a site navigation map will make a site more crawlable.

Mobile Compatibility

In the first quarter of 2020, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 52% of global website traffic, making mobile users an important market to cater to. Specifically tailoring a website for mobile devices can include cutting down long bodies of texts, simplifying the navigation system and reducing the size of images and videos to improve loading speeds.

Crawlability

Websites must have the human experience at the forefront; however, this needs to be carefully balanced with crawlability. Search Engines use bots to crawl websites as well as download and index information to determine if the site can be trusted and if they should recommend that site to their viewers. If a website’s architecture cannot be processed by the bot’s algorithm, then they will be automatically classified as suspicious and may be penalized.

Ways to Improve Your Website’s Navigation

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There’s no point taking the time to create a website for your business if you don’t also take the time to ensure that the site is easy for your visitors to find their way around.

Good web design answers the important questions about your business and what it’s about, and that means that your website’s navigation needs to be spot on if you’re going to convince visitors to become customers. Unfortunately, so many businesses, of all shapes and sizes, get it wrong.

Here are some simple things you can do to improve the navigation of your website and make it a whole lot easier for visitors to access the information they require, make purchases, and get in touch:

Plan, Plan, Plan

Before you even think about working on your company website, sit down and plan its content and navigation. Create a flowchart that shows the direction you want visitors to take through your website and the main areas that you’d like to draw their attention to. Pay particular attention to your website’s main navigation and the categories you want to include.

Check Out the Competition

It makes sense to see what the competition is doing if you want to get your website’s navigation right. Make a list of the 20 biggest competitors you have and make a point of going through their website like a customer. This should give you some valuable insights into good and bad navigation, which h you can then use to make your website one of the best in your niche.

Pare it Down

Ideally, if you want to make your website as simple and informative as possible, paring down the number of navigation options on offer is a good idea. The fewer options there are, the less cluttered the site will feel and the easier it will be for visitors to find exactly what they want.

Keep it Clean

Keeping your website as free of animations, auto playing videos, and sizeable images will ensure that your website loads more quickly. It will also keep distractions to a minimum so that the focus of your customers is on your content, products and services. There is nothing worse than a slow loading website to make things difficult and send potential customers away, so avoid temptation and leave those unnecessary elements out.

Make it Static

Your website’s navigation menu should stay in the same place from page to page. It shouldn’t be at the top of the homepage and the side on the about me section.

Text-Based Links

You might think that image-based links look more interesting, but they’re also more difficult for some users to find, and they don’t work as well when it comes to search engine optimization and boosting your website’s position on Google.

Use Basic Language

A lot of companies are tempted to use flowery technical language because they think it makes them look more professional, and this might well be the case, but it also makes it more confusing for their users. So, at least when it comes to menu headings and page titles keep things short and simple.

Be Very Specific

Instead of making your navigation labels general, like saying ‘services’ make them more specific like ‘divorce’ and ‘criminal law’ This will ensure your visitors find exactly what they want quickly and give you another handy SEO boost.

Avoid Drop Down Menus

If you really want to include drop down menus on your website, go ahead and do so, but be aware that a lot of users find them annoying because they can start to move around, and thus cause people to click the wrong link, and get in the way. They’re also a lot more difficult for the likes of Google to crawl, which means your website might not be as easy to find in the first place.

Include a Search Box

Including a search box right at the top of your website is a great way to help your visitors out. If despite your best efforts, they still find your website tougher to navigate than they would like, they can simply type that they’re looking for into the box and a list of options will appear.

Excellent website navigation, which enables visitors to move through your website quickly and without issue is a proven way of increasing conversion rate and boosting your website’s performance. It is vital that you take the above steps, and any others that you can think of to ensure that this is a reality for your website.

Good Luck!