Your website is more than just a collection of pages—it is a reflection of your brand’s personality. Every eYour site is a story of your brand. The color scheme and placement of text communicate. For example, an uncomplicated, clean, professional, well-designed site conveys a new, modern company that cares about aesthetics—likely its service as well; a complicated, outdated, poorly designed, nonprofessional site conveys an outdated, complicated image or a disinterest in professionalism.
Good web design evokes good credibility. If a site is transparent, neat, organized, and aesthetically pleasing yet simple, users will have an easier time finding what they need and, in turn, feel more at ease with you. If a site, however, is overly complicated, it annoys people. This is the final stop—for social media, for email marketing, etc.—yet eventually everyone will come to your site, which can shape your brand identity and purpose; therefore, it should be made intentionally.

Three Benefits of Good Web Design

There are many benefits of good web design. Here are just three.
Enhanced engagement, conversions, and retention. Professional web design surpasses what your web real estate is intended for. If your site is intended to be user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to navigate, a professionally done website will surpass expected levels. People will linger longer, they’ll spend more money, and leave good reviews, which generate other new visitors.

• Keyword Focus: Ease of use, dollars spent, ratings
• Explanation: Quality keeps them there. When people don’t like a service or get frustrated before they explore, that’s a site of no quality. You want quality to hold them captive.
  Increases SEO and digital marketing.

When your site is reputable, it’s constructed with SEO in mind. A poorly constructed, slapdash site has poor coding or is at odds with search engines, which decreases rankings. By investing in a proper site, your likelihood of an upboost in traffic is due to that increased visibility.

• Keywords Focus: SEO, increase traffic, visibility – Explanation: When a company takes the time and effort to create a professionally constructed site, search engines recognize them and subsequently give better placements. This professional quality can be given to your site.
  The more traffic you have because the more traffic your site gets, the more credibility, buzz, and word of mouth are created. Naturally, when people see your site, they tell others and generate traffic for you. A frequently trafficked site gets a leg up. More traffic means better search engine ranking.
• Keyword Focus: credibility, buzz, and word of mouth; search engine ranking; traffic
• Explanation: The more traffic your site gets, the more it is ranked on search engines over time. More people seeing your site only stands to reason that more people will be potential customers.
  Yet, with web design benefits, there are a few anticipated drawbacks as well. Three disadvantages that might result even with a successful website include:

1. Costly to Develop and Sustain.

Developing a professional website comes at a cost. This means hiring professional web designers and developers and potentially digital marketing experts to generate a designed, reputable online presence that could be costly. In addition, upkeep on such a designed, created, established site will require time and money—from security updates to rotating seasonal content.

— Reasoning: Sites are Ready to Go. When you need something like a website as quickly as yesterday, you don’t have time to spare on research or waiting for plug-ins and features. You’re a small business, a startup, and things are in flux. Not having a website means you’re losing money, so you need to get things up and running as fast as possible. But this doesn’t work in your favor for a quality website.

3. No Rushed Projects

• Rationale: Need for fast turnaround times. Digitalization is only going to continue. Design trends change from year to year. What may work this year may not work next. Businesses need to be able to adapt to ever-changing technology and top-notch design trends.

2. Fast Turnaround on Design

Websites are glitchy and incomplete when designed with fast turnaround. Like anything else, when something is done with fast turnaround, quality control expectations are not followed relative to expected timeline and aesthetics.

• Reasoning: To avoid future problems. While it’s true that access to edit—with an editing fee—could result in the site being poorly edited, non-existent, or too personal in the long run. But if edits are not made or are unable to be maintained, there will be a stagnant site, worse than not having a site at all, which makes the company appear outdated.

How to Ensure You Don’t Get Lost in the Competition

There is so much competition and so much accessibility online that you want to ensure you don’t get lost in the competition. You can do so on your website by:

1. Featuring a Unique Branding Differentiator

Everything that makes a company better than the rest should be on the website. Your story, your mission, exploit advantages over competitors, and brand variations or niche areas of your company. Use relevant images to showcase such things, use a branding color scheme that won’t change, and a voice that’s appropriate for your branding persona.

• Key Word Target: Content quality, informational blog, digital content marketing. — Hint: Whether blogs, videos, or infographics, offer customers educational information; SEO favors consistent, quality content.
• Trick: Use phrases like “mobile friendliness, faster download speeds, responsive design” to boost SEO. Make sure everything you make can be seen on every type of reasonable device.

4. Add New Content Frequently

There is no better approach than adding new content because Google appreciates those sites that frequently change their pages and blogs. When you do add new content, make sure to use relevant keywords because your blog can benefit your page rankings.

• Pro Tip: Employ speed testing software to evaluate your website’s speed and review your code with linters to guarantee it’s error-free.

6. Evaluate Engagement Continuously

After launch, you’ll still need to evaluate success. Use heat mapping software to determine where your audience is (and isn’t) clicking, then adjust accordingly. You may even want to try A/B testing later on.

• Tip: Have a strong CTA in bold, capitalize and use a font that grabs attention. Change placement and see where the CTA gets the most response.

5. Know What’s New

Finally, part of creating your own identity is knowing what’s new. Don’t become irrelevant after creating your responsive website by continuing to learn. Follow new trends and ideas through online marketing workshops or digital marketing blogs and social media. The more you know, the better poised you will be to create a successful responsive website.

• SEO/Keyword Focus: New web design, new look for websites, digital advancement. – Tip: Constantly update your website. Update your look, update your content. This will keep your website looking current but also convey to your audience that your brand is always moving.
  
  

Conclusion Your digital identity is your digital footprint. It shows not just your online actions and personal and professional service offerings to others, but it also reveals who you are. Web design increases authority and credibility, improves user experience and accessibility, and enhances SEO. However, web design complicates your existence. It’s one more expense to worry about and budget for, and one more time-consuming process that may require future updates.

Differentiation will come from branding, copywriting, load time, mobile accessibility, calls-to-action, and following/fighting trends. Ultimately, the more you tailor the site to your demands to successfully support your project, the more traffic and better engagement you customarily achieve in the digital endeavor.

Web design is the online welcome for your brand. Good web design indicates to prospective clients and partners that you care about your project and that you’ve attended to detail and creativity. Adjusting your web design for SEO purposes now will matter down the line as your brand grows and is more successful than the average.
Happy designing and digital marketing!