Online marketing is one of the most in-demand services by modern businesses. Marketing helps spread awareness of your website and drives traffic to your online space. But, as it is with any marketing effort, it will only be successful if the product being marketed is of high quality and meets the needs of the target customer. Here’s how to design a website that will complement your marketing efforts.
Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
As of 2023, approximately 60% of all online traffic originates from mobile devices. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you are alienating a majority of internet users. Luckily, designing with a good website builder ensures that your website is mobile-friendly. Top-tier website builders include responsive design which adapts a page to suit a device’s screen size to maximise readability. You should also make sure that the templates you use translate well to a mobile phone screen.
Make Your Website Fast-Loading
Website loading speed is one of those factors that newbies don’t value – to their detriment. For starters, if your website loads slowly, a user will most likely close that tab and try a competing website. Internet users have notoriously fickle attention spans. Also, besides user experience, loading speed is one of the metrics that Google, and other search engines, consider when ranking your site on the result’s page. Slow load times can result from using a sub-par hosting service or having too many multimedia elements in web pages. Always choose a hosting service that’s renowned for excellent speeds and optimise your sites to load more fluidly.
Keyword Research and SEO Optimization
The first step to creating relevant content is doing keyword research based on the online search behaviour in the market you are targeting. Understanding the keywords your customers use helps your content rank better in search engine results.
Related to keyword research is SEO (Search Engine Optimization), this is where you optimise your content to rank on search engines. Many factors influence your SEO including: having original content, good grammar, intelligent keyword integration, and having the right links (internal links, external links, and backlinks). Partner with an SEO specialist to create a winning content strategy for your website.
What Content Works for Your Business?
When it comes to optimising your website, content is still king; your marketing efforts will fail if you have the best design elements and non-engaging content. Through effective marketing research, you should understand your potential clients’ needs and the tone that you should adopt with your content. Make sure that your content addresses their main needs and concerns. Use catchy titles and subheadings. Make sure your grammar is impeccable and that your prose is engaging. It pays to engage a freelance copywriter either to edit your content or to write it from scratch. Most are affordable, and you should be able to find one that understands the market you are targeting.
Conclusion
Before creating a website marketing strategy, it’s important to optimise your website and make it marketable. There are many ways to optimise your website for your users but the four most important are: making it mobile-friendly, making sure it loads fast, keyword research/SEO, and creating relevant and engaging content.