What is an Online Presence and How Can Website Design Help Your Business?

A business’s online presence can be defined by how easy it is to find your company when searching for relevant keywords online or how many online channels—Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram etc. a customer can interact with when wanting to find out more about your brand, products and services. If you have an excellent online presence, you’ll be visible on the internet and social media, making you far more findable for potential new clients.

In its basic format, having a website and ensuring you’re active on relevant social media platforms are both key. Similarly, creating a Google My Business Listing can quickly display your contact information and encourage people to select your website when searching online.

What does a good online presence mean for businesses? Online presence refers to all activity and content that an entity—a person or a company—has under its name on the internet. This includes any information created by or about the person or business.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a set of activities aimed at improving the positioning of web pages in organic search results. Because organic search—the unpaid listings that appear on a search engine results page—a good SEO strategy is crucial for improving the quality and quantity of traffic to your website.

Understanding Website Design and the Different Types of Websites

1. E-commerce websites

E-commerce websites enable users to shop for and purchase products or services online. Amazon, Etsy, and other businesses that sell through an online store are great examples of e-commerce. These sites make it easy to select items and checkout using a credit card, a payment service like PayPal or an e-commerce platform like Shopify.

2. Personal websites

Personal websites are for individuals who want an online presence to voice their opinion, promote a cause, help with job prospects, or establish their brand.

3. Portfolio websites

While similar to a personal site, this type of website is about showcasing and promoting your professional work to win clients. A portfolio website is a canvas for designers, writers, videographers, artists, and other creative professionals. These types of websites exist to highlight specific skill sets and services that individuals or sole traders offer.

4. Small business websites

A small business website provides an online presence so potential customers and clients can learn about a company, its employees, products, services, and culture. In addition, a small business website provides information so people can reach you directly. Examples include local accounting firms, service providers (plumbers, HVAC, etc.), restaurants, and law offices.

5. Corporate and large business websites

These sites serve multinationals or large national companies and are much more comprehensive regarding information. They may have complex technical requirements, such as multiple office locations, recruitment functions, chatbots and appointment-setting functions. They are often multilingual.

6. Public sector, third sector and charity websites

Again, these sites can be relatively few pages or much more extensive and may have complex technical requirements. They can also have an e-commerce function if required.

7. Blog websites

You should regularly update your blog website with relevant articles, videos, and photos to inform, entertain, and educate your audience. They often are more narrative-based but can still incorporate information about the person or company creating the content. For example, blogs are sometimes platforms to voice an individual’s opinion, or a company may have one to offer valuable content to their customers. These websites can either focus on the blog—centring the site around the regularly updated content—or be linked to or built into a more extensive website.

You need your website to be as attractive as possible to ensure your customers have a positive experience and generate potential return visits. That means investing in web development. Here are a few tips for creating web pages that motivate and drive sales:

1. Create high-quality, exciting content in your Website Design

Users who like what they see will learn more about you or your organisation. People don’t want to read boring corporate jargon and text; they want to find something that improves their lives. Therefore, you can attract visitors more efficiently by filling your website with exciting content.
Blog articles with how-to tips are very popular with potential customers. They can help capture the attention of those looking for solutions your company offers. Target the appropriate audience with the right content to drive engagement.

Don’t forget to provide an option for customers to contact you for more information or invite them to pass on your solutions to someone who needs them.

2. Include images and multimedia

No one wants to read through a big block of text. Bullet points help; images, videos and diagrams are even more effective. The right photograph, illustration or graph can show people exactly what your webpage is about. Using multimedia such as videos and slideshows is another excellent way to keep your audience engaged.

However, while using advanced features is a good way to grab attention, video assets will slow down your site’s load speed, making visitors leave. How fast the image appears and how smoothly it runs will depend on how the video is embedded, its size in Mb, and its length. Size your images correctly, and always use web and mobile-friendly formats. Avoid making the visual effect too frenetic, as this can alienate the viewer.

3. Pay attention to your SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) requires you to write text content, including specific search terms (keywords and phrases). Therefore, it would be best not to complicate things too much or use over-technical language. Still, mentioning the main topic on each web page is essential. For example, if you want to find users looking for estate agent services, mention “estate agent” a few times on each page.

It demands a long-term, ongoing commitment. You won’t see results right away, but the benefits of SEO will improve your online presence, ranking and visibility.

4. Make your website easy to navigate

You will always want users to find what they’re looking for quickly. In a shop, signage guides you to the merchandise you need and staff to help people find the correct product. Online, you need to do the job of signage—for information and guidance—using intelligent web development. Make sure each subject has its own web page and logically organise things. The overall aim is to help people enjoy their browsing/shopping experience.
A great website will prove itself through online analytics—collecting, reporting, and analysing website data. Your sales conversions, average order records, earnings per order, page views, click-through rates and many other performance metrics can tell you how well your site is performing. Engaging content, attractive graphics, great SEO, an intelligent user interface and user experience design are the entry standard in web development and optimisation. Start with these ideas for a successful website.

Tips for Creating an Award-Winning Website

Award-winning websites are generally visually stunning, easy to navigate, and contain no bugs. The information you see on them presents a lot of information, value and interest quickly and clearly.

Award-winning website design employs a responsive design. More and more, people are searching sites while on the move. As the market is full of smartphones, tablets, and other devices, you need your website to work on any of them. Creating a website that can work on multiple devices is a significant investment. However, in the long term, it will justify the cost. First, it is going to optimise the way your visitors interact, and it is going to improve your search engine ranking. However, the most significant advantage of it comes down to the numbers. It’s pretty simple; your website will be available on more devices, which means a larger potential number of visitors.

The navigation needs to be smart and easy to use. From a user perspective, all you want to do on a website is to find what you are looking for quickly, without any problems. Use this principle; award-winning websites do that.

Your audience wants a user-friendly website, so be careful about using white space. You can start with a minimalist approach and showcase great graphics that people will enjoy. On the other hand, a busy and messy homepage can cause users to feel overwhelmed, confused and switched off.

So creating a website with a lot of white space will encourage the audience to stay and explore it.

It pays to make your website landing pages convincing. Don’t just talk about your services, products or offers. Instead, show people their benefits quickly and clearly using headings and bullet points.
When the design part is complete, together with the functionality, you need to think of speed. Award-winning websites are very fast.

The best way to improve the speed of your website is by getting an expert on board. Then, you can reduce the active redirects, simplify the code and avoid any bad requests.

If you’re using WordPress, these things are easier to achieve. For example, you can use browser caching (temporary storage of resources in web browsers) through plugins like W3 Total Cache or something similar, like a code compression plugin. An alternative to using plugins is making improvements yourself: Gzip, download fonts and use them locally instead of embedding them, and disable anything WordPress offers that you are not using.

For a website to be engaging, its content must be relevant to your audience. In addition, it has to be clear, and if so, this can significantly help build trust.

Even if you don’t know, your website already competes with the whole internet. It would be best to keep your users engaged, starting when they come to your site. The rule of 3 seconds is essential here. It’s best to ensure the first piece of content they see is clear, organised, and engaging.

If you have an online shop, you can use certain positive customer reviews that you had in the past. Another strategy could be to showcase specific deals or coupon codes for a particular promotion that you are running. By doing so, readers will be more open to purchasing your services or products.

Think about the user experience that your site is offering. Award-winning websites always have a clear experience that amazes users. All elements, from the design to functionality, need to work together.

Award-winning websites are a challenge to create. It requires a lot of work and effort. Still, it’s not an impossible mission, and anybody who follows the tips we just mentioned and goes beyond has a significant chance of making their website visible. It’s just a matter of how important this is to obtain. However, if this goal is important but the information above feels like walking through treacle, engage a designer to do it for you.

Website Design: Benefits of Hiring a Professional Web Designer

1. It Will Save You Time. You probably don’t know enough to build a solid, optimised website, even if you know a little bit.

2. Your Website Will Be Reliable. Even if you make the website yourself, it may be unreliable. Remember, you aren’t a web design expert, so you may not realise your website isn’t reliable until it’s too late. For example, your website could be up and working well for several months. But the second you try to change something, it shuts off or has other problems. For reasons you can’t understand, your website doesn’t look the way it should.

3. You Get Better Designs. What you can do on your own may be pretty limited. Using a website template could leave you with a boring website that looks like everybody else’s.

4. The Website DesignWill Be Faster. A website on its own won’t be able to perform as well as a website that has the right plugins and other tools. Fortunately, a website design company will know these things and which ones will help your website. That means you’ll get an above-average website that isn’t bogged down with images and pages that take a long time to load.

5. It’s Made with the Latest Mobile Technologies. Because you aren’t a web developer, you probably don’t know what these technologies are. Mobile-friendly designs are constantly changing and growing; missing out on this can cut off potential customers. In addition, many people search the internet on their mobile phones, so it’s essential to have a website compatible with their devices, be they iPhones or Android.

6. Your Website Will Look Good. It takes people about 1/10th of a second to get the first impression of another person. But it takes them even less time to get a first impression of your website. Within the first 50 milliseconds of being on your website, the user has already decided whether they will stay or leave. That means the way your website looks is fundamental. If it is a good, clean, modern website, your visitors are likely to stick around or come back in the future. If your website looks boring, clunky, or old, they’ll probably leave and find something they like better

7. You Will Look Trustworthy. People want to know that there is a reputable company on the other side of the website. A website that’s thrown together in a hurry or just not made well isn’t going to give them that. But a professional web design company can do this for you. Getting them to create a clear, functional website can earn you more clients. If they see a website they like the feel of, they’ll be more comfortable interacting with your business.

8. It Will Be SEO Optimised. A website design company can give your website excellent search engine ranks. This means it will appear higher in the search results and more people will be able to find you. If your site isn’t SEO optimised, it will be difficult for potential clients to discover you. If they can’t find your website, you are losing customers.

9. You Will Make More Money. The website will look better, so your clients will get a good first impression and trust the company behind the page. That means you’ll gather more customers willing to do business with you.
Your website will also rank higher in the search engines, letting even more people find you. You probably won’t get these things if you make your website yourself.

10. It is an Investment in Your Future. Your website is an investment, not a cost. So when you think of it that way, it’s worth spending a little more to achieve that personalised touch.

Choosing the Right Website Design Platform for Your Business

There are many website design platforms or site builders. The number constantly grows while some fall by the wayside (leaving people stranded). Here are a few:

• WordPress.org
• Web.com
• Wix
• HubSpot Website Builder
• WooCommerce
• Gator by HostGator
• Hostinger Website Builder
• Domain.com
• BigCommerce
• Shopify
• WordPress.com
• Squarespace
• Weebly
• Dreamhost Website Builder
• GoDaddy Website Builder

After experimenting with several options for many years, we chose to specialise in WordPress, as this is very powerful, fast and universal. We have also placed a notional bet on the platform being with us for many years.

How to Maximise Your Website’s Performance

What Affects Website Design Site Speed?

There are many reasons why a site load time might lag. However, the most common factors are:

• Extensive CSS and JavaScript use
• Poor server/hosting plan
• Large images
• Not using browser cache software
• Overuse of widgets and plugins
• Linking images and other resources from slow servers
• High traffic volume (site visitors)
• Older browsers
• Slower network connections (mobile devices)

We have a build approach and strategies to handle these issues, including using WordPress compression and optimisation plugins.

What are the Best Practices for Website Design SEO?

You can do a million things to get higher Google rankings (including advanced SEO strategies and techniques). Here are a few:

1. Add Your Main Keyword Early On In Your Content
2. Write Unique Titles, Descriptions and Content
3. Optimise Your Title Tag for SEO
4. Optimise Your Site’s Loading Speed
5. Track Your Results With The Google Search Console
6. Optimise Images for SEO
7. Use Internal Linking
8. Publish Amazing Content
9. Build Backlinks To Your Website.

The Benefits of an Effective Web Presence

Post-covid, this seems to be a no-brainer with, for example, restaurants that had never been accessible on the web suddenly offering online ordering from their own websites or via Deliveroo for example. Under the “new normal,” a great website can not only have a massive impact on you and your organisation’s relationship with customers, but it’s also the most effective way to draw people in and build trust. This can help boost your profits and build a solid customer base. So for most businesses and organisations, a website now seems an essential requirement. Here are a few concrete benefits:

1. It Increases your Market Reach
2. It helps to Target your Audience Better
3. It Improves User Engagement
4. It allows you to Build Brand Reputation
5. It helps you to Generate Better Revenue.

What is Click Web Design and Why Should You Care?

We are a small company providing cost-effective fixed-price web design packages for small businesses, restaurants, pubs, charities and the third sector. You should care because we have helped many companies, charities, and public sector organisations achieve their goals in the past, usually for a price they were delighted with. We can do the same for you.

Website Design: Conclusion

All the above may seem complex, technical, scary and daunting. Click Web Design can help you navigate the maze or handle the process for you, be it design, building a site, improving an existing website or an SEO or marketing exercise. Please get in touch.