A Book is Judged by its Cover
As children, most of us are taught to be objective, keep an open mind, and to lead by example. “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” “Never judge a book by its cover.” These addages are gentle reminders of who we should strive to be as adults. While all of these ideals are beautiful, one of them is a fallacy in the world of business. Clients often judge a book by it’s cover. You may think this does not apply to you. You’re clean cut and well dressed, you conduct yourself professionally, and your business card is spot on. If you have a physical store, perhaps it is the picture of perfection. However, business is no longer conducted purely in the physical world. We have entered into the digital age and the percentage of business being conducted online is only increasing year by year.
Your Website is your First Impression
It isn’t enough to have any old website. The days of hand crafted HTML are gone and the web building relics of the 90s are dead and buried. If you want to compete in today’s online markets you’ll need a spotless, user friendly, website that’s not only professional but memorable. So what makes a website a design marvel rather than a hot mess?
Visual Appeal:
This is the cover to your “novel”. You have a split second to impress potential customers and if the user doesn’t have a positive first impression you’re in trouble. The quality of your online presence says a lot about your business and cohesive, appealing, graphic design is mandatory for success.
Branding:
Your website needs to directly reflect your brand and business identity. Colors, fonts, logos, and imagery should all be consistent. If users are already familiar with your business, it should be immediately recognizable and connect visually to your physical local, if you have one. Picking up a premade template can seem like a tempting solution but templates are neither unique nor exclusive to your brand.
User Interface & Navigation:
The design of your website should feel natural. This means users should find navigating your menu and accessing the different pages on your site not only easy but intuitive. Your clients should always know how to find what they’re looking for and adding a sitemap to your website is a great way to improve accessibility.
Content & SEO:
Every page of content on your website should be concise, informative, and engaging. You do not want to put your customers onguard with a lack of information, nore do you want to overwhelm them with walls of text. Your content plays a major role in your placement in search engines, so precision and balance are key. This is achieved through SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. For example, if you’re selling All Terrain Tires it’s imperative you try and rank for those keywords through carefully written copy.
Site Health & Optimization:
Have you ever been to a website with broken links and wonky dropdown menus that don’t stay open long enough to click on? Were loading times agonizingly slow? Did you get fed up and leave because you couldn’t be bothered to fight the website’s user interface? That website was a failure. Beautiful graphic design and an intuitive UI are worthless if your website isn’t functioning across all platforms. User’s are more likely to move on to whatever’s next then struggle against poor functionality.
Put Your Best Foot Forward
These are all things you’ll need to keep in mind if you want to succeed in the online marketplace. Not only is it a lot to remember, it takes experience and knowledge to execute these elements correctly. That’s where we come in. Whiskey River Media has a host of experienced, motivated designers, and marketers geared up to help your business thrive online. We’ll walk you through every step of the process, from concept to creation until the end result is guaranteed to please not only your discerning sensibilities, but your customers. With over 70 years of combined experience, Whiskey River Media has what it takes to take you and your business to the next level. We won’t stop until you’ve reached the pinnacle of success.Contact us today!