Your search engine marketing efforts are geared toward bringing more visitors to your website. Once there, it is the job of your website to convert such visits into sales. How can your website do this if it does not have an optimized design? By optimized, we mean a design that is user-friendly and leads the user to purchase your products or services.
A website offers information to the visitor using a combination of graphics, text and, in some cases, video and audio. It can be a one-page website or a collection of web pages linked to each other to form a whole.
Like all other projects, web design needs careful planning for its design layout and contents. This will also be the basis for easier website expansion later.
It is very important that the main objective of the website be identified clearly in the planning stage. Who is the target audience of the website and what action do you want that audience to do? Only when these are clearly defined will you be able to plan the design of the website effectively.
Of course, anyone from around the world can view your website. You also have to make sure, therefore, that your website appeals to a wide audience even while it is especially targeted to your preferred primary audience.
Your business website’s look should reflect the image you want to project for your company. It should contain the company’s profile and products and services. Upon arriving at your website, your visitors should immediately see what you can do for them and why you are their best choice over your competitors.
Your website should have rich content, an attractive visual design and an intuitive interface. Your content should be original and informative to your visitors. It is important that this content is written with search engine optimization in mind, with all the appropriate keywords and key phrases in place.
Most websites are made up of several web pages. Each web page should have its own objectives. The web pages should be titled based on your keywords and key phrases.
From the home page and all other pages of the website, the visitor must be able to see what other pages are available and what links to click to get there. Graphic icons can be used with text to aid navigation and interaction. Make sure, though, that the graphics do not take too long to load. Stick with small file sizes.
Do not make your visitor rely on the “back” and “forward” buttons of the web browser. Your own menu should be on every web page, with links to all other web pages. These links should change to a distinctly different color once a link has been visited so that the visitor knows where he has already been and where he has not yet visited.
A very useful tool in planning the website is the storyboard. The storyboard is the counterpart of an outline for the website. It contains the general objective of the website and its primary target audience. It also includes all the individual web pages and their respective objectives. All the minor objectives should be working in support of the general objective of the entire website. With the storyboard, everything is placed in their proper places. You avoid having a confusing website. You also avoid duplicate content as well as missing out on some important details. At a glance, you immediately see what you have or do not have. This can also make your site mapping much easier. It saves you much time and effort.
With proper planning and preparation, you are on your way to the best website design to support your search engine marketing campaign.