Why Design Alone Isn’t Enough for a Successful Website

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(3 June 2016) When working on your website, try not to get too caught up in what it will look like. Sure, the overall design and attractiveness of your site is really important, but in order for it to be a true asset to your brand and business, you need to go beyond design.

(FirmBee/Pixabay)

Continue reading to learn more about why design alone isn’t enough for a successful website, and why web development plays an integral role in how well your site actually performs.

User experience keeps people on your site

No matter how great your site looks or how unique it is, if the user experience (UX) is poor, visitors won’t stick around. UX boils down to the interaction that a user will have with your website, so you need to make sure that your site makes it easy for a user to find what they’re searching for quickly, regardless of what device they’re on.

When you take user experience into consideration and you combine it with responsive design during the building of your website, you’ll inevitably create a site that truly works for the visitor, and that will keep visitors engaged and coming back.

Content should be useful and engaging

People will be going to your website for its content, whether they want to gain valuable information via your blog or they want to simply learn more about your company. Therefore, in addition to design, you also need to spend quite a bit of time thinking about the content that you’ll post.

Create a strategy that will allow you to write and post content that will appeal most to your key stakeholders and target audience. Think about the needs of these groups and you’re sure to create a site that they’ll want to visit again and again.

Update your website easily with a content management system

If you want to control and update every image and word on your site quickly and easily, you’ll need to use a CMS (Content Management System) like Drupal or WordPress. With this valuable tool, you won’t have to know CSS or HTML, you’ll reduce errors, and you’ll quickly be able to add new content and pages to what’s already there so you can keep your site up-to-date at all times.

Track progress with analytics

The right analytics software will make it easy to determine the number of visitors that your site receives daily, as well as which pages are the most popular and how long visitors stick around. Beyond basic analytics, however, you should also use marketing automation software. In this way, you can learn about the behaviors, sales-readiness, and interests of your leads, and you can target the design and content of your site to those individuals. Make sure you also track call-to-action click-through rates and conduct A/B tests for clear and specific data about your visitors and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

In the end, there’s a lot more to a great website than its design. So while good design is certainly essential, keep these tips in mind when developing and maintaining your website.

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