Is Your Website Effective?
Having an ineffective website is like beating a dead horse. What’s the point of having it if it’s not taking you anywhere? So many business owners think that their website is a total waste of time and money but the truth is they just do not know how to use it to attract customers. Assess your Digital Marketing Agency’s capabilities and processes to ensure they give you the best out of your website.
An effective website will always work in your favor. These 7 website design elements should help you determine how effective your website is.
1. Context
The design and layout of your website should be very easy to understand. While building your website, the navigation and architecture should be intuitive. Users shouldn’t have to think about how your system works and how they can get from point A to Point B.
Studies show and suggest that users explore websites using the “F-Pattern”. This means that they mostly concentrate on the top, upper left corner and left sides of the screen; only occasionally taking glances towards the right of the screen. So it would make sense for you to place the most important elements of your website like navigation, call to action, branding, etc. on the left side of your website
2. Content
Is the content on your website readable and useful? If you want your readers to get the message you are trying to convey, you have to present it in a way that makes it readable.
Before publishing content on your website, ask yourself how it will benefit your readers. Are you adding any value to their lives or are you simply talking about how awesome your product or service is?
So how exactly do you go about making your content readable?
First, you need to break down your content into shorter paragraphs. A huge block of text is not that appealing. You should have no more than four lines in every paragraph. Second, your content should have subtitles. This makes it easier for the readers to find what they are looking for. Third, make sure to include bullet points. Your pictures, videos and sound should also be clear.
Quick Tip
For videos, it’s best to include a link to a third party application like YouTube. Uploading an entire video on your website will make your website load much slower. And if users realize your website takes forever to load, they will hit the back button and move on to the next website. So it’s best to load your videos on YouTube or any other third party video player and then link back to it on your website.
3. Commerce
If you are running an e-commerce website, you should ensure it’s designed in such a way that it is able to do commercial transactions. In other words, you should think like a consumer. Most online shoppers say that the biggest reason they abandon their shopping cart is because of overly complicated navigation or too many pages in the purchase path. If the checkout process is clear and the shipping and pricing information is readily available, you will reduce the chances of your customers abandoning their shopping cart.
Your payment process should also be easy. You should be able to offer your customers a variety of ways for them to make secure online payments. Locally, you cannot underscore the importance of integrating mobile payments such as Airtel Money and M-Pesa on your website.
4. Community
Your website should have a section where users can interact with each other. You can set up a message board, a forum or even live chat feature on your website. WordPress.org, for example, runs its own forum where users can post WordPress related questions and other users can help them out.
5. Connection
If you have any links that lead away to other websites, you might want to regularly check them to ensure they are always working. If you run a content management system like WordPress, there are several plugins that you can install to help monitor external and internal links. You might also want to do an SEO audit on your website often to ensure that there are no links from “bad neighborhoods” linking to your site. Such links can seriously affect how your website ranks on search engines.
You should also consider including internal links in your website content. Linking to other relevant pages on your website decreases bounce rate while increasing the click-through-rate. Again, this will work in your favor when it comes to search engine rankings.
6. Customization
Your web design should be flexible such that your customers can tailor it to suit their needs. Social media platforms are a great example of how companies can allow their customers to customize their websites. Twitter, for example, allows users to change the theme color of their accounts.
7. Communication
Your website needs to have a channel through which your customers can interact with you. You can do this by setting up live chats with the company reps, including surveys, signing up for newsletters, etc. The idea here is to have someone available to assist customers and to create a great customer experience.
Have implemented any of the 7Cs on your website? Get in touch with us for an effective website today..
Looking for a Digital Marketing Agency to Help You Build Your Brand Online?
At Pulsar, as a digital marketing agency, we do more than designing and developing websites. We work with businesses to build their brand online and use it as an avenue for brand growth. Get in touch with us to get started with your online marketing requirements.
