June 7, 2022
Creating the most effective website for your brand requires 5 Key Ingredients: Content, Design, Copy, User Experience (UX), and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While there are many other features to consider, these are the essential building blocks to creating a delightful and informative experience for potential clients visiting your site.
Provide Valuable Content (Like This Blog)
Each piece of content that you create for your website should be valuable. The content of your site is more than just the text, it’s the information itself. This content could be provided through a variety of means, such as images, video, copy, or even audio. It’s more important to make sure that the content you’re providing is concise, clear, and valuable than any other factor of web design. So, how do you know what content to provide?
First, know your audience. Who is it that you’re trying to reach in the first place? The kind of content you’d use to appeal to middle-aged men will be quite different from what you’d use if your target clients are women in their twenties.
Second, know your purpose. What is it that you’re trying to say, or achieve, through your website? What kind of questions do your users, or target clients have? Your content may be focused on providing information for the services that you offer or the work that you’ve previously done. You may be more focused on showing the physical products that you offer and the variety of visual options customers have to choose from. Your purpose will guide what type of content is most important to feature. Visitors will always prefer the experience of viewing a site with useful content over one with catchy design and little to no useful content.
Catch Their Attention With Effective Design
This isn’t to say that design is less important. It takes approximately 0.05 seconds for a visitor to form an opinion about your website. That’s it. Almost immediately after someone views your site, they’ve already decided whether or not they want to stay. The design provides the immediate visual appeal to keep people interested. Once again, imagine your ideal customer and what they would be interested in seeing. Would they be more attracted to minimalist design or bright and flashy branding? Are the products or services that you offer best displayed primarily through images, text, or video? These questions will guide you into designing the most visually appealing and effective layout for your site.
Communicate Clear Copy (With Occasional Alliteration)
How you frame and phrase the copy, or text you use is vital for communicating with your visitors. The copy itself should capture the voice and personality of your brand. Make your visitors feel as if you’re speaking to them directly. Help them get a sense of who you are as a company and whether or not they can trust your brand. Copy should also be able to communicate in a way that’s easy to understand and interesting to read. You want visitors always feeling they are getting value from the information you’re providing. Remember, the visitor needs to be continually shown what value you’re providing for them, and how you can make their life better.
You don’t notice UX on a website, unless It’s bad
User Experience, or UX, has been in the spotlight of design for the past several years and for good reason. UX may be something that you haven’t considered before. But, we guarantee that you’ve likely had experiences with it that have resonated with you. Imagine a visually appealing food blog with thousands of recipes but no way to sort or search through them. How will you find that perfect brownie recipe? You’d likely click off this frustrating site in search of one with a better experience. This is the importance of UX design.
An effective website that has considered User Experience is built with the perspective of a visitor in mind. The user’s needs and desires are anticipated. A path through the site is clearly laid out for ease of use. Going back to the brownie analogy, a well designed website would be easily searchable so that you can sort through all the information provided to find exactly what you were looking for; in this case, amazing brownies.
Make Sure Google Sees Your Website With SEO
Finally, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is absolutely key for making sure that potential clients can find your site in the first place. Using a search engine, such as Google, is the main way many visitors will find your site. Knowing how search engines index websites and how they choose which results to show, and in what order, is extremely important. This is where SEO comes into play. Titling and tagging each page of your website with the correct keywords, as well as sprinkling them throughout the copy of your site can make the difference between visitors being shown your site at all.
Bonus Tip #6: Hire An Experienced Creative Agency
All things considered, Content, Design, Copy, User Experience, and Search Engine Optimization are just the beginnings of building a great, effective website. But they are important to get right. Without these 5 Key Ingredients as a foundation, even the most well-meaning sites are unlikely to be found and used. Although implementing these tips can be time consuming and somewhat tedious for one person to manage, it’s absolutely necessary to have a successful and effective website. Rather not handle it all on your own? We know an excellent Creative Agency that can help.(Spoiler: it’s us). If your brand is looking to create or update your website, our team would love to partner with you.