If you are a business and still don’t have a website, you’re missing out on a huge market of your customers. Gone are the days of whipping out a Yellow Page directory to look up a business. Millions of people search the Internet daily and look for products and services online.
Is Your Website Holding You Back from Getting More Customers?
Here’s why we ask: When we ask businesses about the purpose of their website, some common responses are, “to give people more information about our business” or “it’s our online business card”. Your answer, however, should be this: “to get people to call us” or “to increase sales”, or “to increase foot traffic through our door”, etc. The bottom line: You want people to take the action you want upon landing on your website and this is where thoughtful web design and direct-response copywriting helps.
What Elements Are Needed In a Good Design
You could be the best dentist in San Diego but if your website doesn’t have the right mix of ingredients, it is (unfortunately) set up to fail right from the get-go. You need all these of a good website: a design befitting of your industry coupled with excellent user friendliness, a compelling message that speaks to your audience, and top rankings in the search engines. If you miss out on any one of these three ingredients, your business is simply under performing because all you have is an online brochure. These principles apply whether you are a lawyer, plastic surgeon, dentist, auto repair service, restaurant, hotel, or any other business. The days of having a simple “online business card” and expecting it to miraculously pop up in the first page of the search engine results for people to find you are gone. If you are not on the first page of the search results, you might as well be invisible.
Have An Effective Design That Gets Results
The reality is that you are expert in your field and not an expert on website design, copywriting and Internet marketing. That’s fine, because we are very good at what we do and are here to help you. We will solve your website problems by creating and maintaining your online presence so that you focus on what you are good at.
Web design is not about creating a fancy website with all the bells and whistles. Rather it is about creating an effective website that gets the job done. For instance, you may think that having a number of Flash images on a webpage is a good idea. In many cases, however, these preconceived notions of what a good website is actually slow down the loading time of a website to the point where your visitors lose interest and patience. Attention spans are short and getting shorter each year. If their needs are not met quickly, they end up clicking the back button in less than 5 seconds just to visit another website – your competitor (ugh!). The result: you lose the opportunity to communicate with your potential customers and lose a sale.
To have an effective website, you do not need to understand the complexities of HTML, images, CSS, Flash, Java, plug-ins, or any other computer terminology. You also do not need to understand how to create engaging copy for your site. We take the load of dealing with all this technical stuff off you. We know how to launch a website for results.
The Impact of Mobile Search
Personal digital assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Google Now are increasingly impacting consumer behavior. In Thrive Analytics’ 2014 report, 56% of smartphone owners used a digital assistant to search for local information. It noted that 64% of users use such a service weekly, with over 50% of uses occurring while users are “on-the-go”.
Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?
More and more people are using the mobile devices to surf the web. A responsive web design enables you to communicate your message across all the popular platforms people use today – mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop computer with a single website that has the ability to adjust the layout dynamically based on the size and orientation of a user’s display and browser being used. If your website is not mobile responsive, you are losing potential customers. Some facts that make having a responsive, mobile-optimized website an important consideration for the immediate future:
- Since 2010 the time the average Internet user spends online has doubled due to increased use of mobile devices.
- 91% of adults in the United States own a phone; 61% of those phones are smart phones.
- In 2012, marketers spent $4.4 billion on mobile advertising in the US. It doubled to $8.5 million in 2013. By 2017, it is expected to be $31.1 billion.
- 25% of adults in the US only use a mobile device to access the Internet. PCs are quickly becoming tools of the past.
- Having top organic search results are more important than ever. More than 33% of search clicks go to the top search result.
Still not convinced you need a responsive web design? An online mobile strategy is no longer optional, rather it is a must for future business success. In this chart by Comscore, we can see that mobile users have clearly overtaken desktop users with the trend only increasing in the future:
As of April 21st 2015, Google released an update that will give websites that are mobile-friendly a boost in the mobile search results. These changes will be rolled out in every country currently with Google users and apply to search results in all languages. If your site is not mobile-ready, you will see a drop in rankings! If you don’t wish to be a casualty and want to be ahead of the curve, we can help. Here’s a mobile-ready test tool offered by Google to see if your website is truly mobile friendly. As a local business, you must ensure your website is mobile-friendly because an increasing number of web users are searching with mobile devices.
What We Do
Our job as marketing partners with you is to create and maintain a responsive website design that:
- you are comfortable with
- your potential customers will find in the search results
- sets you apart from your competitors by telling them why your potential customers should do business with you
- answers any queries or concerns your prospects might have before they take action
- inspires your website visitors to take action
Let us work with you so that prospects who are looking for you find you quickly and get what they want. Contact us now to get started.
