Whether or not your website is for Ecommerce, it is the ultimate platform for building your brand, creating an online presence, and boosting your business. Think of your website as a digital business card, with the personality of a face-to-face meeting to boot. Consider a networking event; you leave with 30+ business cards in your pocket, but how many are memorable? How many look professional? How many are worth investing in? In the same way, your website needs to compete, communicate, and convince in order to take a top position in the food chain of an online ocean.
For start-ups and small businesses trying to get their name standing strongly amongst
their competitors, they must ensure that they have a fully optimised, smart and streamlined website which communicates these two crucial questions: Who are we? What can we do for you? In doing so, you can effectively use a technological platform to form empathetic human relationships with your growing pool of customers. A website is now a necessity to all businesses, but here we outline why this is of particular importance to small businesses and start-ups.
Building a Brand Means Building Trust
Your brand is far more than a name and a logo. It is a representation of who you are, what you do, and how you want to be seen by your customers. The breadth of a brand’s value comes down to the value you give to it, and whether your customers are willing to invest. That investment comes about as a result of respect for your brand and the trust customers can put into it.
Web design that inspires trust incorporates a number of elements. Website security,
fast loading speed, an aesthetically pleasing colour scheme and page layout, professional images, engaging and informative content, and easy navigation are amongst the most important. By having a website which optimises these features, you communicate your dedication not only to your business, but to the users whose needs are then satisfied and leave feeling appreciated and likely to return.
A Well-Designed Website is the Ultimate Employee
Unlike you and your colleagues, your website works 24/7 all year round, without taking bank holidays, or going on long weekend city breaks. After calling it a day, your website continues to provide potential customers with important information, a strong customer service and positive user experience - or so it should to power your success. Indeed, a speedy, clean website which perfectly represents your brand is a crucial companion, especially during out-of-office hours where much of your users’ browsing will take place.
Essential Ecommerce Web Design
Year on year we are seeing Ecommerce spending rise. This means the opportunity to have a successful Ecommerce business is also rising, but it also means that the competition is becoming increasingly clever in order to stay safely in the top spots of the search engine results pages (SERPs). For newcomers, Ecommerce can be a tough nut to crack, since there are so many components requiring careful consideration in order to provide users with an easy, breezy, positive online shopping experience. A reliable and knowledgeable web designer will understand how to optimise page loading speeds, ease of navigation, provide a secure and trustworthy checkout system with an overall design that is clean, clear, and prioritises the users’ needs.
Bite the Bullet on Budgeting for a Website with Legs
For start-ups and small businesses, it may be tempting set up your own website, have a vaguely tech-savvy friend do it for you, or find the lowest independent bidder on Gumtree. Parting with as little money as possible is an understandable priority, but one that, having pulled past clients from the depths of web design despair, we advise should not be passed onto your website. For something as imperative as your website, quality is key; finding a reputable and skilled web designer with a fair price is a must.
There are all sorts of questions that you should be asking a prospective web design agency. Find someone to whom you aren’t just a number adding to their pay package, but is invested in you, listens to your needs, and proposes a plan put into terms that you can understand.
Budgeting for a brilliant website shows a belief in your business that can be respected and trusted by perspective customers. If you are a small business in need of a boost, or a start-up looking to burst onto the scene, get in touch with the in-house team at Christian Michaels for a free consultation.
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