When you aren’t tech-savvy, shopping for a new website design can be a confusing and scary process. If you collect quotes from a wide range of different companies, you’ll probably see some very different quotes. In fact, the quotes can range as much as thousands of dollars, and to the untrained eye, there may not be much difference between the different options in front of them.
But it’s important to understand that your website is not just some art project. It’s the most prominent customer-facing piece of digital marketing collateral that you have. It’s where new and old customers alike will come to learn more about your business, discover your services, and reach out to your business when they are ready to buy.
Delivering a website that walks your customers through that process in a nuanced way is critical for digital success.
But without technical knowledge, understanding what features your website needs to have to put you in that position can be impossible. Worse, trusting the companies that you are hiring to handle your web design can be a crap shoot.
Here at RiseFuel, I focus on helping clients to understand that the point of their website is to deliver a return on their investment, and as high of a return as possible. That means that there are certain features that I always recommend to new clients and encourage them to pursue, whether they use our services or not:
A Responsive Web Design
A majority of your visitors will visit your website on their smartphone or tablet. It’s just a matter of fact in today’s world. In fact, some studies suggest that more than 60% of all web traffic comes from a mobile device.
Just take a look at the growth in mobile visits between 2016 and 2017:
You need to make sure that any website design that you invest in is suitable for mobile users, or else you could be missing out on a huge percentage of your customers.
A responsive website design is the answer for mobile devices. Responsive websites are designed to automatically resize to fit the screen that loads it while keeping a consistent design.
Responsive website technology is embraced by Google, so there are SEO benefits to choosing a responsive design as well. When we work with a new company on a website design here at RiseFuel, we always use responsive technology to ensure our clients can make the most of the mobile traffic that comes to their website.
A Modern Content Management System
Sometimes your engagement with a company that offers website design in Charlotte, North Carolina will end when the project is finished, with no other services rendered.
In these situations, it is important that you have a simple and reliable way to edit the content on your website to reflect changes to your services. You don’t want to have to go back and pay the company to constantly update your website.
Solutions like HubSpot and WordPress allow you to edit the content on the pages of your website in the same way that you would a Microsoft Word document.
Of course, there are some other considerations that come with editing web content, but having the ability to ensure your website stays updated is critical and should be a basic part of any kind of website design service.
SEO Considerations
Every website should be created with search engine optimization taken into account. It’s critical for making sure that you are able to be found by your ideal customers. There are a lot of technical aspects of a webpage that can have an effect on its ability to rank for relevant keywords in search engines.
The list of factors might actually be much longer than you think. Just take a look at this image from Moz, which outlines all of the different features that Google takes into account when ranking websites:
Working with a company that understands the value and importance of SEO is important. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons why you don’t hire that family friend that claims to know about building websites.
You need someone that truly understands that bigger marketing picture and will create a web design that positions you for success.
A Customer Relationship Management Solution
When a person comes to your website and fills out a contact form, what do you want to happen? Well, to start, you should receive an email, right? That’s just the bare minimum.
Ideally, you would want all of your new contacts to be stored in a database. That database should include all of the relevant information that they provide on your contact form, as well as fields that you can fill out as you begin the conversation with the prospect and begin to learn more about them.
When we work on a new website design project for companies in Charlotte, North Carolina, we always connect their contact form to the HubSpot CRM system.
It’s free and is the perfect tool to use if you want to invest in inbound marketing at a later date. You’ll be able to keep track of all of your customers through that simple system and serve them better in the process.
Professional Copywriting
One often overlooked feature of a website design is the actual words that go on the page. Copywriting is the practice of persuading your audience to take action.
That action could be buying your product, signing up for your mailing list, or anything that you deem valuable. There are tried and true marketing techniques that make all the difference in the effectiveness of your website.
Professional copywriting can mean the difference between 2% and 3% of your visitors into customers. That may not sound like a huge difference, but over time those numbers really begin to add up.
A professional copywriter is a one-time investment that will pay off for years to come. Here at RiseFuel, we use professional copywriting techniques for the content of every website that we put together.
Secure Hosting Platform
Depending on your industry, it may be very important that you are able to protect customer data. This is especially true in the healthcare and financial industries.
Any company offering website design in Charlotte, North Carolina should be well-versed in the available hosting options as they apply to your needs. Additionally, any host that you choose should be fast to load so that your customers have an excellent experience on your website.
Need Website Design in Charlotte, North Carolina?
If you want to work with a company that offers website design services in the Charlotte area, you need to find a company that understands the big picture.
Here at RiseFuel, we believe in setting clients up for success in their broader social presence in every design project that we take on. I’ll work with you to design a website that meets your needs and provides a reliable marketing machine that helps you to sell more, reliably.
