Finding and retaining customers is key to your business. Many businesses spend a lot of time and money on website optimization. While site optimization is necessary, optimizing the trust of those potential customers is ultimately necessary to increase revenue. Beautiful web design can go a long way to turning potential customers into paying customers.
Site optimization is generally used to mean search engine optimization. It is the changes made to a web site to improve a site’s page rank in search results. This includes adding original content, using keywords and links, having search-engine-friendly web design and resolving technical issues like errors that make your site look less desirable to search engines. This improvement in page rank increases the chances of potential customers finding you, since few will go beyond the first page of results. When it’s done right site optimization increases your traffic, sometimes by amazing amounts.
Since no one is just going to hang around your website and randomly hand you their money, just having your site optimized isn’t enough. You need to concentrate on turning those visitors into paying customers. This is where web design comes in. Web site design consists of collecting ideas and aesthetically displaying and implementing them on electronic pages for access through an electronic device with a web browser. Web design includes the layout, incorporating user friendly features and incorporating the use of color, graphics, and content to get your message to potential customers.
While having a well-optimized site provides lots of traffic, it doesn’t automatically mean you will have more paying customers. It is possible to have a website with plenty of traffic but a low number of paying customers. That scenario really defeats the purpose of your business having a website in the first place.
Here is where web design comes in. Aesthetics are really the key here. A good looking website makes your company look professional, and thus more trustworthy. Simply put, you need to look like you know what you’re doing. You can have tons of traffic and have a great product, but if your website looks thrown together without any thought, or downright ugly, it will instantly hurt your credibility. And those visitors will leave quickly, greatly decreasing the chance that you will convert them into paying customers.
Your web site is your chance to make a good first impression. So good web design also shows that you care about your business. Customers will then infer that you care about them too, increasing trust and helping make personal connections.
Visitors to your website need to trust you before they will become paying customers. The credibility given by a nice, professional website is a start. Your website also gives you a way to create a personal relationship with your potential customers, which helps position you as trustworthy. You are taking those positive emotions generated by your beautiful web design and associating them with your product or service, making it more personally meaningful and desirable to the potential customer. That increases your chances that they will interact with your web site in some meaningful way, such as signing up for your e-mails or following on social media or even contacting you for a quote. You have just turned a cold lead into a warm lead and greatly increased your chance of gaining a customer.
While site optimization can really help your business, don’t neglect quality web design in favor of it. Your web design is what will ultimately convert that traffic into increased revenue.
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