For businesses looking to get a website for the first time or who are unsatisfied with their current website, choosing the right website design company can feel a bit overwhelming. Not only are there a ton of companies and freelancers out there, but there are also plenty of platforms where you can design your own website.
In this post, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know to find the perfect web design company for your business. By the end, you’ll know:
- ⇢ Why your site needs to be mobile-friendly
- ⇢ Why speed counts
- ⇢ Why SEO is a crucial part of web design
- ⇢ Why you need a sitemap
Should I Design My Own Website?
This is the first question everyone asks themselves when they decide it’s time to get a website. Nowadays, there are plenty of online platforms that will give you a template to work with. But do you really know how to design a website that will work for you?
Let me clarify: Do you know how to make sure your site ranks well on Google? Do you know how to build lead generation right into the design? Do you know how to optimize the images and videos on your site to make it load faster than your competitors?
The layout and branding of your website are really just the beginning of web design. The real heart of it, the stuff we focus on at LinkNow Media, is web design that generates traffic, leads, and sales.
Rule number one: hire a professional web design service that has a proven track record of designing stunning websites according to field-tested lead generation strategies.
Mobile-Friendly Web Design
Alright, it’s settled. You’re going to hire a professional. The first thing you need to find out is whether they design their sites to be mobile-friendly.
Google’s goal is to make sure that its users can find the sites that they want, when they want them. They know that consumers use their phones to shop, find directions, and communicate. With the average person spending, on average, around 4 hours a day staring at their touchscreens, Google prioritizes mobile sites over desktop ones. They simply get more traffic.
You need to get in on that traffic by having a website that’s mobile-friendly, or has a responsive web design, as we call it. Without a mobile-friendly site you’ll lose leads to your competitors every day.
Rule number two: make sure your website is designed to be mobile-friendly.
Speed Counts: Fast and Furious Web Design
Tied into the idea of mobile-friendly design, is the need for speed. Load speed, that is. Research estimates that you have 5 seconds to communicate all the essential information about your company to Google users. But if 50% of that exceptionally short attention span is taken up waiting for your site to load, you’re out of luck. In 2.5 seconds, you just lost a client to the competition—because their site loaded in under a second.
The difficulty is that this 5-second rule is even shorter on mobile. Research shows that you have two seconds on mobile. Two seconds to get a lead. Two seconds to get a sale. It’s survival of the fittest out here, and speed counts.
Your SEO web design team should design your site to load fast. That means good image and video compression, limited use of animation, and overall lightweight design.
Rule number 3: improve load speed to rank on Google and generate leads.
Your Web Design Needs to Be SEO Optimized
When choosing the right web design company, it’s important to find one that will design your website to be searchable on Google. After all, it doesn’t matter if you have the most beautiful, dynamic website if no one can find it.
The SEO web design company that you hire should aim to get you ranking on Google. There are three basic ways to do that:
- ⇢ Clear and communicative web design
- ⇢ Keyword-rich content aimed at your prospective clients
- ⇢ Generating traffic to your site
We’ve covered this topic in a lot of other posts on the blog, but the basic summary is this: your site should be as user-friendly, clear, accurate, and trustworthy as possible. This is all the stuff that Google likes. But it’s also the stuff that your potential clients like. SEO optimized web design is a win-win.
By filling your site with easy to find information about who you are and content that’s relevant to your potential clients—including searchable keywords—Google will reward you by ranking your site higher. Moreover, if other sites show interest in yours by linking to it on their blogs or elsewhere, this will improve your reputation in Google’s eyes. And if Google promotes your site on their search engine, guess what?
Welcome to lead town!
Rule number 4: make sure that your site takes advantage of the current online ecosystem and that your website is designed to generate leads on its own.
Good Design Includes a Sitemap
Just as your users don’t want to waste their time trying to navigate a confusing and slow website, Google’s robots don’t either. That’s why your web design service should also prioritize the internal architecture, creating a clear sitemap that allows Google’s robots to crawl your website at top speed.
Sitemaps give you the opportunity to tell Google which pages are the most important on your site—something that’s especially important for businesses with big websites. As we’ve seen, it’s always a give and take with Google. If you make it easier for their robots to crawl and index your site, they’ll be more likely to give your ranking a boost—and that means more leads!
Rule number 5: make sure your web design service optimizes your site’s architecture to make it easier for clients and Google bots to navigate your site.
Need Help with Web Design Services?
While there may be a lot of web design services out there, few are as effective as LinkNow Media. Prioritizing both impactful web design and SEO optimization, we have crafted a unique set of lead generation strategies that have proven, time and again, to make sales. It’s no surprise that we have over 10,000 active clients!
If you own a small- to medium-sized business, consider choosing LinkNow Media as your web design services!
Have any questions? Leave us a comment below, and we’ll be happy to get back to you, fast!