A great web presence will make or break your business. And I believe this is true regardless of whether your company is trading online or not.

If you’re selling goods or services from your website, it goes without saying that your platform needs to be attractive enough to capture the attention of potential customers and built in such a way that makes their experience with you easy, efficient, and enjoyable.

But I think the same goes for a brochure website – or, in laymen’s terms, a site that’s built to give users more information about what you can offer, without the functionality to physically purchase something from them). Your audience want to know that you’re professional, capable, and credible – and if your website isn’t either of these things, that’s going to have some bearing on how they perceive your organisation, and how likely they are to purchase something from you.

Here are 3 reasons why a good quality website is at the core of any successful company.

 

1. Your website is the digital face of your company

The quality of your website directly reflects the quality of the product or service that you are offering – in the eyes of your potential customers, anyway. If your website is riddled with spelling errors and links that don’t work, it’s not going to paint your business in the best of lights.

Think about it this way: would you judge a physical product on a shelf by its packaging? Of course you would. So that’s the way you need to think about your website. In an age where most of our shopping is done online – especially post-Covid – there’s little opportunity for customers to pick something up and examine it. The same goes for B2B transactions; prospects are typically interacting less with your staff and more with your digital assets, especially if they’re still in the research phase.

Your website is central to your customers’ experience of your products, services and overall brand. It needs to be the very best it can be.

 

2. These days, everyone expects more from company websites

Just having something live for the sake of it isn’t going to cut it anymore – and there’s no excuse for not investing in something that meets your users’ needs. People quickly get frustrated with poorly designed or badly written websites. If a platform isn’t responding or performing how they expect it to, they will stop engaging with it and go and find what they’re looking for somewhere else.

 

3. A bad website will almost always load slowly…

…And this will have huge repercussions for your engagement levels, your search engine exposure, and your actual conversions.

This is because your site’s page load speed is one of the most important factors in delivering a good user experience, not to mention achieving better positions in terms of SEO. So much so, that a recent report from Google found that 53% of users will leave a web page if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. That’s a big chunk of custom to lose, right?

Speed isn’t the only issue that often crops up on old, outdated and poorly performing websites, though. Other turn-offs include confusing layouts, broken links, rubbish content, a poor performance on mobile devices, and unwelcome audio or video. All of these things can be fixed by redesigning and potentially redeveloping your platform so it better meets the needs and preferences of your audience.

 

So, there you have it – the importance of having a good quality website, along with some top tips on how to improve yours. This isn’t an aspect of your business that you want to neglect. Even if your budget is tight and your resources are limited, you should always do what you can to ensure your site meets the expectations of today’s time-strapped and super-discerning web users.

 

Kickstart your redesign by asking yourself two simple questions…

The key to creating something everyone will love is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

Firstly, you need to ask yourself:

What will users want to learn about you from your website?

And secondly, how can you present this information in an attractive, easy to digest and easy to navigate way?

Graphics, branding, fun functionality, great copy – you can’t begin to create any of these things until you’ve nailed the above. (Believe me, I’ve tried… and it’s never ended well!)

If you’re a bit baffled, and you don’t know where to start when it comes to redesigning, rewriting or redeveloping your site, drop me a message. I’ve helped hundreds of companies relaunch their business online with sites that are fully optimised, wholly fit for purpose, and engineered to perform brilliantly.

Here’s a little more information on my web design services. I often design and develop WordPress websites, but I can create stunning eCommerce websites too, as well as those shaped with a best-in-class, custom-built CMS.