For online entrepreneurs, website design is already half the battle.
It’s a serious business.
No kidding.
Think of your website as your storefront if you were in traditional business. If you are a coffee shop seated next to 5 different coffee shops on the same lane, on the same street, having the best tasting coffee is not enough. It doesn’t matter if you have the best coffee beans in the world if no one sees, smells, and actually try them behind the door.
The same goes in online marketing. If your website doesn’t have that magnetic appeal that keeps your customers engaged, it’s bad for business and it certainly has a direct impact to your profits if you are in ecommerce.
In fact, according to Adobe, 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive.
A show-stopping website may not come easy on the pocket because it’s not just about pretty color schemes and fonts. A well-thought out website contributes to an enhanced user experience (UX), which is something that many marketers struggle with aside from consistently putting out relevant and useful content. And to build a seamless user experience, you need the help of experienced hands and not a Fiverr guy.
Here are the three statistics-backed reasons why you should invest in a premium website this 2017.
- Mobile-optimized websites are more likely to attract new customers
If you think mobile optimization is just a web design trend, you’re dead wrong. Mobile devices now accounts for nearly 2 of every 3 minutes spent online.
According to ComScore:
- Between December 2013 and December 2015, tablet internet consumption grew by 30%.
- Between December 2013 and December 2015, smartphone internet consumption grew by 78%.
- Between December 2013 and December 2015, desktop internet consumption dropped by 1%.
If you are in B2B and you think you are an exemption, think again. Based on the same study, 40% of smartphone and tablet owners search B2B products on mobile devices. That’s a huge audience you’re missing there!
- Usability and User Experience Design is now more important than ever
You may not know it but seemingly boring pages in your website like the About Us page is not much of an importance. Data proves the opposite.
KoMarketing conducted a study in regards to UX and garnered very interesting insights:
- Once on a company’s homepage, 52% of visitors want to see “about us” information.
- 47% of website visitors check out a company’s products/services page before looking at any other sections of the site.
- Once on a company’s homepage, 86% of visitors want to see information about that company’s products/services.
- Once on a company’s homepage, 64% of visitors want to see the company’s contact information.
- Speed paired with attractive visuals on a website is a sure winner
Images and video and other forms of rich media like presentations and infographics contributes to user engagement. If you want your readers to keep browsing pages after pages, information packaging is the key.
However, one of the annoying situations that you may have come across the last time you visited a glitzy website is the page loading speed. Thirty nine percent of people will stop engaging with a website if images won’t load or take too long to load.
Here are other important statistics related to website design and engagement:
- Given 15 minutes to consume content, two-thirds of people would rather read something beautifully designed than something plain.
- 44% of website visitors will leave a company’s website if there’s no contact information or phone number.
- Given 15 minutes to consume content, two-thirds of people would rather read something beautifully designed than something plain.
You see, building a website is no longer just a 3-step method – buy hosting and domain, hire a guy on UpWork or Fiverr for $50 for design, and upload a couple of paragraphs of text and images.
These studies have proved that a premium website takes more than a couple of elements to build to make it irresistible to your customers.
Over to you. What experiments have you done that made your website more engaging to your digital market? How much are you willing to spend to build a website that makes ROI?
