The internet, it’s a tough world out there. For every business, achieving online success is the ticket to continued growth (and maybe an early retirement, with a yacht, and gentle Mediterranean Sea breeze). Of course, with so much opportunity for success, the World Wide Web also welcomes enormous competition. When it comes to small businesses and start-ups making their mark, a smart, creative, and fully optimised website is essential. As a web design agency based in Manchester, we know a bit of something about building beautiful websites that not only look great, but work really well for the users and for those all-important search engines. As the owner of a small business or start-up, you may be toying with the idea of a DIY job for your website. We want to share why you might want to use a web design agency instead.
Web Design with the Users in Mind
User experience is something that you may or may not have heard of. If you ask our in-house web designer, he will get really excited and tell you how important it is and all the things he does to ensure the user experience is an entirely positive one. In layman’s terms, user experience is the way in which website visitors use your website and find what they’re looking for. It incorporates a lot of web design and content elements, for example easy navigation, well-placed CTAs (Call to Actions), and trust-building content by way of words, images and videos.
The thing about small businesses and start-ups is that your business is not yet a household name, whether that is locally, nationally, or globally so winning the trust of your new customers is really crucial. Gain their trust, and you can expect your sales and enquires to grow. Designing a website with the user in mind is all about building trust – and often this is best left to the experts.
Smart Web Design for the Search Engines
Imagine this scenario: you make a truly stunning website, but the sales and enquiries aren’t coming in as you’d expect. What’s wrong?
Your website may be a work of art, but unless it is seen by your users, no one is going to invest. Optimising a website for the search engines is an imperative part of the web design process. SEO is no single thing; it is made up of many elements such as keyword density in your content, loading speeds, website navigation, mobile version optimisation, Meta titles, the list goes on. These elements are what enables your website to be found on page one of the search engine results. Falling short on your SEO means that you’ll need the help of a web design agency to pull your website from the depths of the search results pages all the way to the top spots.
Whilst we are not one of them, some web design agencies view SEO as an additional paid service. If you’re in the process of finding a web design agency, be sure to check this. In fact, we have a handy blog about the questions you should be asking a web design agency here.
Creative Content to Capture your Users’ Hearts
Okay, we got pretty deep there, but we stick by it. Who doesn’t love a good story with fun and fizz and exciting characters and dragons and such? In the same way that kids are captured by imaginative bedtime stories, your website users need to be inspired by your business. For some small business and start-up owners, channelling their creative flare isn’t so much of a challenge. For others, making brick-laying, or accounting as captivating as an episode of Game of Thrones is not easy. Oddly, there is a large number of web design agencies that don’t offer content writing – we aren’t one of those. Our in-house word wizards can have a conversation with you about your business, do their research and craft entire website content with all the engagement, colour, and creativity of your favourite story – minus the dragons, plus the really important information.
Save Time with a Local Web Design Agency
Saving time is a given; an obvious and wonderful advantage to using a web design agency over the DIY website. The web design agency does everything for you whilst you continue to work on your business. What’s more, using a local web design agency means that you can get in touch with the swipe of some digits, the click of a ‘send’ button, or a quick trip to their office and be welcomed by friendly experts.
Put Money Where it Matters with Web Design
For small businesses and start-ups, budgets might be tight and parting with money should not be done lightly. Of course, taking on the challenge of designing your own website will be the cheaper option in the here and now. Depending on the size of your website and the web design agency you would go with, you would certainly hold onto a few pennies by doing it yourself. However, web design isn’t simple. Nor is it just about aesthetics. We’ve already mentioned the importance of SEO. If you miss this from your website, you will wind up paying a web design agency to do it all retrospectively. Not only that, had your website been generating sales and enquiries from the start, you may have seen the return on investment already.
If you have a small business or start-up and would like to have a chat about what the team at Christian Michaels web design can do for you, please get in touch.
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