Introduction
When thinking about what's important for your website, you need to consider your business priorities. This could dramatically change the way your website is designed and functions.
For the most part, though, most websites are designed to make money for your business. Whether this is through bringing customers into your store, getting new clients to contact you or directly selling a product on your website.
Let's think about a couple of examples.
Real Examples
Carmen's Nails
Carmen used a Facebook page to showcase her portfolio and attract new customers. This isn't ideal because there is no easy way for potential new customers to filter the portfolio and find what they're looking for quickly. One goal for Carmen's website was to make that really easy, so we focussed on building a portfolio that you can easily filter to different types of nail art. People generally have a short attention span and you need to show them what they're looking for quickly or they will get bored and look somewhere else.
Check out Carmen's Nails project
By sending potential new customers to the website, they can easily see Carmen's portfolio and make a decision quickly, along with getting in touch via various methods really easy on the contact page.
Restaurant websites
Another really good example of a website that serves a purpose is a website for a restaurant. When you stumble onto a restaurant website, you want to be able to see the menu, and how you would go about booking a table. Having the menu easily accessible, along with the information about how to book is a priority.
In both the above examples, the purpose is really clear and that is how decisions on design/user experience would be made.
What else really matters?
There are so many things to consider, but here are a few of our most important examples.
How does the website showcase your brand?
It's really important that your website reflects your brand and the tone of your business. This makes sure you are showcasing your brand in the right way, and people should get a sense of culture from your website.
Is your website so bad that it will make people not want to try your business?
This is a really simple one. There are some websites that are really poor and unprofessional. This means you will lose potential customers. A great example I noticed of this recently was when looking for a solicitor in Scarborough. Some of the websites scream untrustworthiness and unprofessional. This will definitely affect the bottom line when so many people turn to search engines and end up on the websites of businesses they are looking to use.
Can your website be easily used on mobile phones?
If it can't be, you will lose many potential customers because of this. More than 80% of internet traffic now happens on mobile devices. Ensuring anyone using one has a great experience is extremely important, and we expect this number to continue increasing.
Is your website fast so people can use it with a bad internet connection or while on the move with a poor signal?
So much of what we're doing now happens on the move, while not at home. This means using mobile data, which can be temperamental at best and potentially extremely slow.
Conclusion
If you're reading this and wondering how your website is performing, get in touch with us for a free, no-obligation website consultation.