Creating a multi-faceted website that attracts prospects and customers

A great website design feel and look is just the beginning of your journey toward communicating with your visitors. An attractive website is practically useless without an effective user interface, a proper SEO strategy and customer response.

What do you mean by “great web design = leads & sales?”

For the purposes of this article, “web design” will encompass the attributes listed above. Ask yourself if your website does the following:

1. Look & feel: communicating the corporate brand/message
   Does it effectively and clearly convey your company’s brand image?
2. SEO: competitive visibility and “friendliness” for search engine crawlers
   • Do your SEO tactics result in visibility that surpasses that of your competitors?
   • Will primary search engines effectively navigate newer SEO protocols to crawl and display your site?
3. Devices: consistent experience for computers, smart phones, iPads users
   Will your website display coherently across all device platforms (iPhones, laptops and pads)?
4. Results: navigation and usability accelerating lead or sales conversion
   Will your qualified leads convert into sales?

Design for diverse target audiences

Creating websites that are customer, device and crawler friendly is tricky. You need to take into account the requirements and expectations of both customers and IT personnel.

Think about what you want search engines, human users and device software to find and do once they discover your site. What relationship dynamics do you need to create?

Don’t lose ground to your competitors by falling behind! Seize the opportunity to innovate and anticipate which gadgets potential customers will be using in 2015 and beyond. You should be asking yourself if there will eventually be a universal standard for displaying html, and how this and other technical questions will impact your design decisions.

Platforms

Both the relatively new members on the Internet browsing scene (like Droids, iPads and Kindles) and computers offer unique routes to the ultimate destination:  you, your web agency, your web designer and your webmasters must take into account the various qualities of each device when displaying your brand. Knowing how your website will appear on all current and near-future devices keeps you well ahead of the pack.

Web crawlers

What is the industry standard for optimizing search engine success? Is it Panda’s algorithmic genius? Is it Google’s +1 gimmick? You and your team not only need to keep up with these concepts, but also surpass their expectations in order to lead the field in SEO strategy.

Design is not for search engines—they are only a means to an end. Prospective customers are the ultimate targets in your SEO efforts. Always remember that emphasis on quality copy is a better strategy than keyword saturation.

People

You want the following people to be able to find your site effortlessly:

1. Influencers
2. Future employees
3. Current customers
4. Your ultimate target market

Your challenge is to write copy and design elements that appeal to all of these audiences simultaneously. Although you can design branching pages for each of these groups, your landing page needs to address all of them in a compelling way.

When visitors reach your website interface, they must find it appealing and easy to use. And you must make them desire to fill out the form, complete the survey or buy your merchandise.