Thinking about a new website design? Don’t bother unless you follow these 3 key steps
Avoid these website mistakes!
With the importance of social media and the increasing use of mobile devices, businesses are heavily investing in website design improvements to keep up with their competition. Make sure you avoid these common mistakes:
Mistake #1: Not having a mobile-friendly site
For the first time since the advent of the internet, time spent surfing on mobile devices has surpassed that spent by users on desktops. Even if your website is attractive and well-designed, unless it properly translates to mobile devices customers will have trouble finding your site. Because of changes to Google’s search ranking system, mobile friendly sites are preferable in order to provide an optimal experience for mobile users. If they do find your site, your customers won’t have an enjoyable experience and will leave if it does not work well with the device they are using to view it. A good web design company will ensure that your website will navigate well on mobile devices and provide a quality user experience.
Mistake #2: Not Optimizing Your Website for SEO
SEO can’t be ignored and business owners fail to think about their website’s target keywords which puts them at a big disadvantage. The right content using the right keywords will help the search engines index your website based on your desired goals. Google is cool, but they’re lousy at guessing. So don’t make them guess. Plainly state what you do and where you do it on your website. Statements like “We are a Bay Area painting company” will go a long way in getting you ranked well on search engines. There is no single magic formula to get your website on page one of search engines and building an online presence takes time, persistence, and quality original content. Choosing the right SEO company to create a solid SEO marketing strategy will have an enormous impact on your business.
Mistake #3: No call to action
This is easy, but one of the most missed items on websites today. As the business owner, what do you want the website visitor to do? Call you? Or Email you? How about placing a phone number at the top and bottom of the page? “Call us now! 415-555-5555” or “Get a FREE quote” and offer a short contact form or button to a form. With mobile searches so high, remember to make the phone numbers clickable for smartphone users.
BONUS TIP: Cut web development cost by using FREE social media features
Failing to utilize social media to promote your brand and connect with customers is bad enough, but missing the opportunity to save on web development cost is crazy!
In the past, having your phone number and email address on your website was enough information for customers to contact you. Today you will be hard-pressed to find a successful marketing team or business which does not maintain company pages on at least three social networking site. In addition to engaging and building a relationship with your audience, social media is an important tool for ushering your audience to your website. Regardless of how beautiful and relevant your website is, if search engines see little or no traffic, they are not likely to improve your rankings.
Not only is social sharing an essential part of social media marketing – and indirectly SEO – It’s also cost-efficient and a great way for business owners to personally reach out to their target audience on a daily basis. This creates opportunities to connect as well as to promote new products, share successes, positive reviews, and information which customers might find useful or interesting. It’s also a great way to post before and after photos. How does this save you any money? Need a photo album? Use Pinterest. Need online chat? Use a Twitter feed. Need a testimonial feed? Use Facebook or Yelp feed.
Looking for A Great Bay Area Web Design Company to Help You with Your SEO and Social Media Marketing?
Contact KO Websites today at 510-276-9902 or via our contact form.