Everything eventually gets old, wears out, and needs to be updated or replaced. In the world of      the Internet, that process is accelerated by a thousand. While you want your company to stand  out, making your website a memento to the 2000s is not the way to do it. Keeping up to date with  the latest technologies and trends is helpful to making your business thrive.

I know many articles merely list the specifics of the things web designers like to drool over—parallax effects, flat vectors, full size sliders, etc. While I will be talking about some physical features, I also want to bring in some less tangible aspects of a good site that you might not have thought of.  Let’s dive in!

1. Responsive/Mobile Friendly Design

If you get nothing else out of this article, I would beg you to absorb this point. If your website does not feature responsive design, and is not mobile friendly, you are doing your company a great disservice. When your website is responsive, it allows viewers to see the best version of your site no matter the screen size of their device. This means that pictures won’t get cut off, words won’t shrink down to a million points smaller than anyone can read, and links are still easily clickable. The same goes for mobile design, but the issue becomes even more important. Mobile design will make or break a user’s experience on your site if they go to it on their phone. And most likely they are: 

  • Google search engine received almost fifty percent of its searches from mobile phones last year, with mobile traffic soon to surpass desktop traffic. 
  • By early 2014 more than 25% of website traffic was from smartphones, and the numbers have only continued to grow since then. 

On top of customer data, Google will rank your site based on whether it is mobile friendly or not. If you made one marketing decision for your site this year, this would be a good one to make!

2. Scrolling Website

I know I said I wouldn’t focus as much on style effects, but I would like to just quickly mention scrolling. Many websites today utilize a long, scrolling homepage that lets potential customers have a better chance at staying on your website before navigating away. There are several reasons for this. It allows you to present more of what your company does without asking the user to navigate anywhere. Also, scrolling gives them a passive way to interact with the site and become interested in it. Even more importantly, on mobile platforms scrolling is essential to give the user the best experience possible, since swiping and scrolling with one finger is how most people use touchscreens.

3. Well-Placed CTAs

Along with mobile design, Calls-To-Action have taken over website building. CTAs start to create interaction between you and the client. They also bring added value to your product, by giving the something in exchange for showing interest. Ultimately, they are designed to convert the people viewing your site into paying customers. Sadly, almost 70% of small businesses don’t even have a call to action on their site! Don’t be a part of that statistic. This is one time that being in the majority makes you uncool.

4. Focus on Images

Over the last few years, the trend in modern websites has been to see images and videos become some of the most prominent factors on a website. They make up header sliders when the homepage first opens, they can be the background of CTAs, and pictures often serve as a way to bring emotion to an otherwise boring page. Full screen and large images make your site more visually appealing. The eye processes visuals more quickly than text, so photographs and graphics can be used to grab short attention spans. They will also set you apart from other brands, which leads to my final point.

5. Personalization

Personalizing your website essentially means creating authenticity for your users. There are so many brands and small businesses today, what is going to make customers want to use you? It’s not enough anymore to assume that people looking at your website know about your industry and simply need a phone number to call you at. They want to know what makes you tick, why you do what you do, and how you’re good at it. Most importantly, they want to know how it can help them. Add in a funny quote from your team members. Show pictures of what your office space looks like. Make your potential customers feel included. Intrigue them.

I hope this makes you take a look at your site to see if it is serving you as well as it could! If your site is in the need of a redesign, or just needs to be spruced up a bit to better capture customers, give us a call at 980-237-1812! In the next article, we’ll talk about how the elements we’ve discussed today fit into Inbound Marketing. You don’t just want a site that looks good and draws people in, you want one that gives you results!