Website Design Tips for Any Business Owner - Simple but Powerful Tips

Your business’ website is everything. So how do you make sure it’s designed to perform its primary duty? LEENTECH Network Solutions, Inc.knows the answer. Let’s find it out in this article.

Whether you’re designing your own website from scratch, using an off-the-shelf theme, or hiring a designer to create your website, you’ll need to end up in the same place: with a website that performs for your business.

Your website is often the first contact people have with you and your business. That means it’s a make-or-break opportunity to turn a new visitor into a potential customer down the road.

Here are some tips which you can use when designing (or redesigning) your website to maximize the impact it has on new visitors.

1. Focus on value. I don’t have to tell you that a great business is built on a strong value plan. That is, why should customers care about your product or service, and how does it provide them with a return on their investment. Also, your content should speak as if you’re talking to one person, not a crowd of people. This helps you make a connection that builds trust and credibility.

2. Minimize distractions. One thing you never want a visitor to ask is, “Where do I go next?” If there are multiple calls to action, or the navigation has too many links to choose from, their attention is diverted in too many different directions. This means they’re too busy figuring out where to go, when they should be focused on your message and the benefits of your product or service. For that reason, you should break your navigation into a primary menu and a secondary one. Your primary navigation (the large one near the top of your website) should include links to only a handful of “mission critical” pages. These are the pages that educate and sell your product.

3. Optimize your call to actions. Everything on your marketing website should be designed around your “funnel.” That is, the path a customer takes from the home page (or a landing page) to eventually converting to a paying customer or subscriber.

The bottom of the funnel is your “call to action.” This might be a button to purchase your product or signup for an account. Or it can be a newsletter opt-in or even a phone number to call you.

As regards optimization, here are three easy ways to do it for the call-to-action on your website:

1. Be explicit. You never want to be unclear in your call-to-action. Give your visitor clear and plain instructions on what exactly you want them to do. You also want to set clear expectations. Your visitor should never be wondering “what will happen after I click this button?” For example, instead of “sign up!”, you can try “Start your free 60-day trial!”

2. Reduce Friction. Any transaction on the web always comes with some natural resistance. Customers simply are never fully comfortable entering their credit card information or even giving up their email address. There is always a fear of being ripped off, spammed, or scammed. You also want to make them feel secure. There is a very real fear that credit card info will end up in the wrong hands. So try adding security symbols like a lock icon on your credit card forms, indicating this form is secure (of course, the form must actually have security measures in place, like an SSL certificate).

3. Differentiate them (visually). You’ll want to make sure your call-to-actions stand out visually. One way you can do that is to give them their own unique color. For example, let’s say the color scheme of your website is blue and gray. You might make all of your call-to-action buttons yellow. Make sure your CTA buttons are the only elements on the page using that color. This helps them stand out and attract attention, but it also helps your audience become more familiar with the way your site works. After browsing several pages, when they are ready to take action, they know they should look for that yellow button.

I hope you found these tips helpful as you go about designing (or redesigning) the marketing website for your business.

Why do you need a Digital Marketing Strategy?

LEENTECH Network Solutions, Inc.can provide your needs in optimizing your business’ promotion through digital marketing. If you want to develop an online marketing strategy, how do you start? Well, it doesn’t need to be a huge report, just a strategy will be adequate. What are those 10 reasons why you may need a DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY?

1. You’re directionless.

Companies without a digital strategy don’t have clear strategic goals for what they want to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones. And if you don’t have goals you likely don’t put enough resources to reach the goals and you don’t evaluate through analytics whether you’re achieving those goals.

2. You won’t know your online market share.

Customer demand for online services may be underestimated you if you haven’t researched about this. Possibly, you won’t understand your online marketplace: the dynamics will be different to traditional channels with different types of customer profile and behavior, competitors, propositions and options for marketing communications.

3. Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share.

If you’re not devoting enough resources to digital marketing or you’re using an ad-hoc approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will eat your digital lunch!

4. You don’t have a powerful online value proposition.

A clearly defined online customer value proposition will help you differentiate your online service encouraging existing and new customers to engage initially and stay loyal.

5. You don’t know your online customers well enough.

It’s often said that digital is the “most measureable medium ever”. But Google Analytics and similar will only tell you volumes not sentiments and emotions. You need to use other forms of website user feedback tools to identify your weak points and then address them.

6. You’re not integrated (“disintegrated”).

It’s all too common for digital to be completed in your storage whether that’s a specialist digital marketer, sitting in IT or a separate digital agency. It’s easier that way to package digital marketing into a convenient portion. But of course it’s less effective. Everyone agrees that digital media work best when integrated with both traditional media and response channels.

7. Digital doesn’t have enough people/budget given its importance.

Insufficient resource will be devoted to both planning and executing e-marketing and there is likely to be a lack of specific specialist e-marketing skills which will make it difficult to accurately respond to competitive threats.

8. You’re wasting money and time through duplication.

Even if you do have sufficient resource, it may still be wasted. This is particularly the case in larger companies where you see different parts of the marketing organization purchasing different tools or using different agencies for performing similar online marketing tasks.

9. You’re not alert enough to catch-up or stay ahead.

If you look at the top online brands, they’re all dynamic – trialing new approaches to gain or keep their online audiences.

10. You’re not optimizing.

Every company with a website will have analytics, but many senior managers don’t ensure that their teams make or have the time to review and act on them. Once a strategy enables you to get the basics right, then you can progress to continuous improvement of the key aspects like search marketing, site user experience, email and social media marketing. So that’s our top 10 problems that can be avoided with a well thought through strategy. What have you found can go right or wrong?