Is an Attractive Website Enough to Improve My Marketing?

BY Jason Howard in Conversion Optimization , Web Analytics , Web design ,

Marketing managers and business owners know the importance of an attractive website to capture audience attention and make them “wow”. True, it takes one brilliant design idea to send your business soaring. There is no room for “build it and they will come” philosophy, it is your website design that should work harder for you and convince your visitor.

However, when we talk to clients want to redesign their website; we see a lack of a thorough understanding and a comprehensive approach that ties website redesign to their overall marketing. Redesigning just for the sake of aesthetics may address only a part of the issue, and you may not get the desired sales and marketing objectives from your site.

Identify the problem and strive for solutions

When redesigning or developing a website, you should identify and solve problems that plague user navigation, access and actions. Identification is the key here. Regular usage of website monitoring tools like Google Analytics will tell you a boatload about your website traffic sources, the time for which visitors stay on your site and the reasons they leave.

After you thoroughly see and visualize the troubles with your website, it is the time to define your needs and chalk out a plan. Having realistic expectations and thinking ahead in times always helps. Think and talk to web experts about clever ways of packaging information, and creating non-ambiguous calls to actions.

Research your competition on your way

Your competitors are your best teachers. The more you analyze them, the better lessons you can learn from them. A comprehensive research on the way your successful competitors create touch points for web users may reveal strategies that you might have overlooked.

There are some great tools like SEM Rush, ahrefs and Compete that will tell you the entire story. When you join the pieces, the puzzle gets solved. This will help you tell your story in an interesting and engaging manner with a different spin.

Being real vs. being stiff and corporate

A little bit of honesty goes a long way in creating a positive experience for your prospects. Social interaction on the wide range of social platforms has changed the way marketing is done on the web. If you do not participate, follow and lead conversations about your brand, your marketing strategy is incomplete. Making a social head start with your newly done website might change your online fortunes quickly.

Updating the website

It is wishful to believe that the website development is a onetime effort. Sadly, this is not true. Visitors and search engine crawlers like to come to the site which gives them a reason to come back. New content; in form of fresh tips, articles, case studies or a set of how-to videos do the hard work of visitor retention. Also, if you engage a reliable search engine marketing firm, it would be easy for you and them to update the content on the website. Website content can change due to many reasons. Some of them are listed below:

Introduction of new products or services
News and press items showing the latest happenings
Decision to change how you package the content for visitor and search engine engagement
Website optimization may require page copy or meta changes to implement search engine best practices.

Tools and applications

While we do not intend to charter into the technical application development territory, thinking ahead of times helps. Many businesses need simple web applications to make their business logic work. Online sales and eCommerce is one such example. Integration with maps tools or conditional access systems might be the other forms of tools and applications that help the business in assisting the visitors to take action.

The REO Industry directory website is a great example of custom application work that changed the fortunes of the company. We built an application that monitors visitor’s geographical location and presents them with REO agents in their vicinity – within their ZIP or in their locality. Moreover, the paid members of their website were shown on a map in a very attractive fashion. The website traffic and the paid membership sign-ups went above the roof for this real estate website that brings asset managers and REO agents together.

Website redesign and development as a process should fit into your overall marketing strategy. Identifying all the components above and taking action relative to them would ensure that your attractive website becomes stronger and result-oriented.

See some of the beautiful creations from our portfolio. They are all custom and very different, still attractive and effective.