Today, businesses cannot thrive — or even survive — without digital marketing. Promoting your products and services across the digital realm has become virtually the only way to stand out from the noise and put your brand in front of the right people.
Organizations recognize the importance of digital marketing, and this is reflected in their significant investments in digital marketing activities.
According to WebXF’s 2023 study, over half of businesses allocate between $500 and $5000 for their monthly digital marketing efforts. Furthermore, 53% of business leaders plan to increase their digital marketing budgets for 2024.
Typically, this budget is allocated across different aspects of digital marketing, including SEO, social media marketing, search engine marketing, content marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, buyer personas, native advertising, and link building.
All the buzz around these digital marketing ventures often sidelines the most important element of a successful digital marketing strategy — the website.
A slow, uninformative, unintuitive, and unattractive website will discourage prospective customers from converting, regardless of how amazing and pricey your marketing efforts were.
So, in this article, we go back to the basics as we discuss the importance of web design as the foundation of your digital marketing strategy.
Web Design — More than Just the Aesthetic
Web design is more than just about aesthetics; it is a pillar for building an effective digital strategy.
Web design encompasses aesthetics such as colors, typography, menu design, layout, CTA buttons, loading speed, and responsiveness. However, all these elements do much more than just look nice (or bad).
Individually and together, they all play a vital role in how users and search engines see, interact with, and evaluate a website.
For example, poor color contrast or small letters can hinder some people from accessing all the information. Moreover, search engines may lower your rankings if your website doesn’t adhere to the set accessibility guidelines.
Additionally, a site’s menu may not be intuitive, causing users to get lost while searching for information and eventually leaving the site. Call-to-action buttons might not be tempting or understandable enough for people to go through with converting.
Slow loading speed and unresponsive design are also poor practices in the eyes of search engines and a guaranteed way to decrease your visibility in search results.
There are plenty of ways web design affects the success of digital marketing — let’s review in detail some of them.
# Good Web Design Enhances SEO Efforts
SEO represents one of the crucial digital marketing strategies as it is closely intertwined with web design.
For instance, image-heavy designs that include lots of videos or animations are harder to optimize for quick loading.
Similarly, even small details such as poor organization of page headings can affect SEO efforts.
Responsive design, easy navigation, and fast loading speed all contribute to improved SEO performance — and they are all affected by your website design.
# Design to Entice Conversion
A good website should aim to encourage user actions or conversions.
Proper placement and highlighting of call-to-action buttons, logical arrangement of information that users need to convert, simple registration forms, straightforward payment gateways, fast page speed, and an overall trustworthy design are just a few of the website design aspects that help increase conversion.
Businesses that have recently entered the market will face an even greater challenge in convincing customers to make a purchase. A new eyewear brand or a recently opened restaurant will need to differentiate itself from well-established competitors.
# Great Design = Great User Experience
The design of a website has a significant impact on the user experience (UX) for your visitors.
Ensure users can easily navigate and click on all links, load pages quickly, and display properly on web and mobile browsers alike.
A user-friendly website with intuitive navigation, optimized for mobiles, and crafted per design best practices is a great contender to become a user-favorite.
# Design to Collect Valuable Data
Your business needs, user expectations, and search engine guidelines will change. Therefore, your website will constantly require modifications and optimization to perform as you want it to.
The best way to implement effective changes to your website is to base your decisions on data.
Data-driven decision-making through in-depth website analytics will help you measure the success of your website and overall digital marketing strategy.
For example, you can A/B test different page designs, identify reasons behind high bounce rates, and pinpoint at which step of the sales funnel site visitors drop out before converting.
# Website is the Digital Business Card of Your Brand
Your website is probably the first point of interaction between your prospective clients and your brand.
A well-designed website creates a positive first impression on visitors and can spark interest great enough to lead to immediate purchases.
Your website’s design is the reflection of your brand — its credibility, trustworthiness, the audience it targets, and the message it is aiming to convey.
Design-wise, this translates to opting for a color scheme, images, typography, and tone of voice that suits your industry and target customers.
Moreover, you can empower your digital marketing efforts by including client reviews, project portfolios, and case studies into your site design.
To Wrap Up
Web design is an essential part of an effective and profitable digital marketing strategy.
Whether your marketing focuses on Google advertising, partnerships with social media influencers, or expert content, your prospective clients will eventually come to the website to finalize their conversion.
Understanding how diverse design aspects relate to your digital marketing and how to translate that into a beautiful but functional website may seem daunting.
However, with the help of some of the best website design companies for small businesses, your online business can get the best of both worlds.
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