This week, we are going to cover design and content creation. Your website's design should prioritise user experience. It should be visually appealing, easy to navigate, and responsive across various devices. Investing in professional design to create a polished and trustworthy online presence adds to your legitimacy and will help entice customers. Content on the actual website is crucial. Without it, nothing will come up on Google, and you will have invested in a website that provides no value. If you're only interested in a few parts of this article, you can jump straight to that section below. We'll be covering these topics:
Web Design Best Practices
Design ties in closely with how you structure your website, which you can read more about in understanding website structure and purpose. Many aspects overlap because you can't have one without the other. When designing a website, it's essential to consider the visual elements, such as colour scheme, typography, images, and whitespace. Your colour scheme should be visually appealing and consistent with your brand identity. Keep it the same over every page, and use colours that don't clash or look too similar. Use only a few colours, which can make your website look cluttered and unprofessional; stick to 3 or 4 at most.
Choose fonts that are easy to read and are visually appealing. Use only a few different fonts, as this can also make your website look cluttered and tacky. Use high-quality images and videos to break up your text and make your website more visually appealing. Just be sure to use pictures and videos that are relevant to your content.
When adding images, remember that the bigger the picture (the more pixels it has), the longer it will take for your website to load. Which brings us to the 'whitespace'. Whitespace is just another term for the empty area around your different pieces of content. Using whitespace effectively is essential to create a visually appealing and easy-to-read website.
Responsive Design
With the prevalence of smartphones and tablets, your website must adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes. Responsive design ensures a consistent and user-friendly experience. The tool we use, which has a built-in Responsive tab, is the Thrive suite. See the example below. Responsive design is just one of the many features of the Thrive suite package.
Alternatives can include Elementor or Divi Website Builders! Both these alternatives have their version of responsiveness capabilities.
Branding Consistency:
Your website should reflect your brand's identity, including colour schemes, logos, and typography. Consistency builds recognition and trust. A consistent flow from social media platforms to your website is one of the significant factors we look at when it comes to our DPT's Website Audits and planning.
Not only is this important to keep in mind when building your website, but we also recommend maintaining uniformity of colours, logos and typography across all social platforms and offices. In doing so, your authority in your online space will continue to grow, helping customers recognise your brand and associate specific colours or themes with your content. Examples include Bunnings Warehouse, which has a very recognisable green and red look and a particular advertising format they use in television, print media and online.
Content Creation Basics and Why it's Important
Quality content is the lifeblood of your website. Crafting engaging and informative content that resonates with your target audience will help keep your Business at the forefront of potential customers' or clients' minds when looking for a particular solution you provide. An ideal marketing scenario, specifically an online scenario, starts with the content you create.
When making content, you want to ensure it has relevant keywords and uses good SEO practices. With those two parameters in mind, your content will appear higher in search engine results, and less specific search terms will still filter the user to your content.
Consistency, even though it's annoying at times!
Consistency is key. You must consistently post short, long-form videos, blogs, or social media posts. We, as humans, are now in the age of quick dopamine hits and short attention spans. If you stop posting or creating content, your audience will lose interest and move on to the next thing.
Not only are you appealing to your target audience, but TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and all types of online algorithms we interact with daily reward consistency. Unfortunately, the inverse is true. If you consistently posted a set amount of times each week and suddenly stopped, you've potentially handicapped yourself and may not get back to the views or traction you previously had.
What If I have no time to create content?
No time is such a significant determining factor when deciding the type of content you wish to share. I take my hat off to all the content creators out there. Whether it be Mr. Beast, a small-time streamer who's just started their career or an influencer - their job is ridiculously demanding! The amount of time spent developing content and ideas is admirable. I'm not suggesting we all go out and become the next big thing; that's unrealistic. Create your content in bulk to keep up with the demands of consistent posting and content production.
What I mean by bulk content creation is setting aside a day or two to create at the start of the month. Content creation is one of my least favourite things to do. Even though it's not my favourite thing to do, I still value and understand the necessity of content. This is especially apparent if you're a small business or start-up that has just started and has chosen the organic route to grow. You must be pumping out content consistently.
Alternatively, you can get a creative agency to help create your content. We offer this service to our clients. You can check out what we provide on our Grow page. We know how important your time is, and content is not a big priority for some because it takes away time from the critical areas of your Business!
Empty Without Content
Another big reason why content is essential is your website will look empty. If your website looks empty, it can make your Business look less credible, and this can scare away potential customers as they may think the Business is fake. The more information, pages, social media links and customer reviews/testimonials you have, the more credible your Business appears, as this shows that the Business has had time and effort put into it. Content adds legitimacy and helps to reassure the customer, giving them confidence that you either know what you're talking about or are confident in your product.
How Web Design and Content Creation Boost Your Online Presence
How does the design and content created boost my online presence? That is a prevalent question we get here at DPT Total Solutions. Everyone wants to improve but has yet to learn what the benefits will be. We're about to break that down into four different sections.
If you have any questions along the way, our team members are also happy to have a chat and provide a catered response to your unique question. You can Book an Appointment with us or send us an email!
Engagement:
Engage your audience with clear and persuasive messaging. Speak directly to prospective customers' or clients' needs, interests, and pain points. One of the best ways to capture the most interest and engagement is basing your content around 'searcher intent'. Searcher intent refers to the phrase or question prospective clients search in Google to find a solution to their current problem.
For example, let's say you want to buy a second monitor for your Computer. Where do you go? Personally, I go to Google and search 'Buy a second monitor for my computer', Enter. Once you hit enter, Google instantaneously crawls their database for either an exact match or similar to that search query and shows you the results.
Look at another example: you run a service-based business, specifically a car-detailing business. What are prospective clients going to be searching to find you? It could be 'Car detailing near me' or 'Mobile Car Cleaning Service'. How will you use that information to create content and structure your website? You could do a video, tag your service area, write a review on 'local car detailers' or post on your socials with your service information and a discount offer, to name a few options.
These options will improve your engagement as it is directly linked to what your clients seek, and Google will reward helpful information and content. If you can write short- and long-tailed keywords and phrases around that intent, the chances of attracting your ideal customer are higher. Higher attraction will improve your website or social platform engagement, increasing sales.
SEO:
As mentioned in previous articles, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. When it comes to SEO best practices, you can do almost endless tweaking when creating your content and building your website. We'll go into greater detail on SEO Best Practices in the next few weeks.
However, the best SEO practices return to researching and incorporating relevant keywords into your content and website. Having relevant keywords on your site will help improve search engine rankings and get your content in front of prospective clients faster. Relevant keywords also tie into searcher intent. Well-optimised content enhances your site's discoverability.
We recommend picking 10-15 Keywords to focus on at a time, as you generally will only be able to rank for some relevant keywords until your authority and brand have grown. You can research appropriate Keywords by using the Chrome extension keywords everywhere. This extension lets you see what your competitors rank for and give you an idea of which words or phrases you could target yourself.
As the old saying goes, "Why reinvent the wheel when it's working perfectly fine?". Once you've established a baseline, you'll have something to work from.
Combining appropriate keywords and tags and searcher intent will lead to improved engagement and higher ranking on Google. Unfortunately, only a few people I know scroll past the second or third page before trying a different search term. With that in mind, you want to show up on that first page and get there by implementing good SEO practices.
Conversion:
Turning your content into money in your pocket requires some conversion. Now, conversions come in many shapes and sizes. It could be converting cold leads to hot leads, email marketing into a sale, or if I spend an 'x' amount of money, I get 'y' on my return, and my conversion is 'z'. Conversions can be boiled down to how many paying customers you got from doing this one thing.
Conversions are commonly made through a strategically placed call to action called a CTA. Effective CTAs within your content help guide visitors toward a desired outcome or action, such as signing up for newsletters or making purchases. If you have a specific result you're looking for, determining that outcome before you design your website or create content will be thousands of times easier.
**Important: Tracking your conversions and CTA performance is crucial for your Business growth and finding the best content type that converts into sales!**
How can I set this up? Call us today, and we'll update your tracking metrics!
Remember to keep your content fresh and updated regularly. Blogs, news sections, or resource libraries can help you provide ongoing value to your audience and improve your search engine rankings. Updating these sections as often as possible can bring new eyes to your content as new keywords are introduced to your website.
How you can start improving your own Business
Depending on where you are on your business journey, there's always something you can work on! You want to avoid finding yourself 3, 6 or 12 months down the track wondering what if I made this change? I should have checked my analytics. Have I missed a potential sale because of x, y, and z?
We don't want that either! Here are a few things you can do right away! Start by running an audit on your website and social media pages.
- Are all your colours clear and readable?
- Have I got different fonts throughout all my pages?
- Is my Logo the same and clear on each platform
Second, Run a speed test on your website if you have one. We use the following free services to check all the sites we Audit.
If you want a detailed overview of what can be improved or changed, send us your results or request an audit for an in-depth audit. Each site will score ?/100 (page speed) or A - F (GTMetrix). The higher the score, the better your site is. We briefly mentioned speed in our blog last week—the rate at which your site loads can make or break your conversion. Your website speed is one of the determining factors; if you have high scores and very few identified issues, your site loads quickly.
After you've done your speed tests, the next thing to check would be your SEO ranking. There are two different Chrome extensions that we use to audit websites.
These extensions are free to use and give a solid picture of what SEO components are missing. The most common elements that need to be added are Image alt-tags and titles. Both extensions will also let you know whether you have broken links and missing headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.). Stay tuned for a more in-depth guide on structuring blog posts and SEO Practices in the next few weeks.
After you've gone through these three steps, create a rough plan for your content. Set aside a day or two, whatever you need, and start creating!
The only other thing you need to check is whether your website is searchable. Without going into too much detail, head to https://search.google.com/test/rich-results.
Insert your website URL, blog post or product page and hit enter. Now, Google will send out its robots to see whether your page is showing up under that URL. You might be surprised how many websites have yet to be indexed correctly! Is yours one? Not to worry, if your page still needs to be indexed, you can request indexing on the results screen.
We hope you found this article insightful! Be sure to follow us across all our Socials and sign up for our newsletter to receive occasional emails with events, offers and new blogs!
Disclaimer: If you choose to purchase or sign up for any programs or software talked about in this article, a small compensation may be paid out to DPT Total Solutions. This does not come at any extra cost to you. We use these affiliate payments to ensure we can provide you with the best advice and practices to Build, Grow, Optimise and Integrate your Business online.