The Importance of Professional Website Design
As the internet becomes increasingly popular, the importance of a professional website design that is successfully established and managed is usually self evident. Studies over the last few years reveal that the internet has already surpassed newspapers and yellow pages for information and research regarding companies, products, and services.
70% of US adults use the internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services, and 63% of those who make online purchases use search engines to research offerings before making a purchase. If your website is not easily to be found on the internet where potential customers, clients, and prospects are already looking, you simply do not exist to the largest and most cost effective source of business you may have.
The difference between a website with practically no visitors/sales, and a flourishing website that generates significant traffic and profit ultimately lies in promotion and marketing. In fact, many websites even get away with slow, unattractive, and unimpressive content simply due to their online visibility. Of course, they won't be performing as well as they could.
A study by Oneupweb shows that as many as 88% of websites are not optimized for marketing and promotion! If a company gets, say, 50 visitors a day to an intelligently developed website - they should expect some of these 50 visitors to make a purchase or request whatever the site may offer. Now, if a company starts to get hundreds or thousands of visitors to their website every day, even a poorly developed website lacking many of the above points will probably outperform the website with 50 visitors a day. Traffic, generated by online marketing and promotion is the most important aspect of a successful and profitable web presence.
If you build it, will they come?
With billions of websites on the internet and new pages being added at an estimated rate of 7.3 million every day, how will one more website make a difference?
There are many factors that largely affect the performance and results of a professional website design:
- Website appearance and general image
- Website load time
- The navigational structure of the web site
- Web site content and it's presentation
- Conversion allowance - the ability to allow people to find what you offer and obtain it
- Cross browser/platform compatibility - ensuring every visitor has the same experience
But, even the most beautifully, strategically, and intelligently designed web site will not make a bit of difference if no one knows about it and no one can find it.
Obtaining a professional website design that is profitable
With 7.3 million new pages appearing online every day, it's obvious a lot of people are creating content for the web. Everyone from children to college professors and industry leaders are creating and uploading websites, and the quality of web content varies as largely as it's authors. To make matters worse, a website seemingly perfectly developed to an untrained eye commonly contains one or many elements which will inevitably prevent significant success.
Once a company realizes the potential a strategic online presence has, the next step is planning how to go about it. Completely ensuring a professionally developed website and internet presence is extremely difficult for the average business owner, as determining which factors are most important to the projects success and therefore hiring the right company is often practically impossible. Custom website design & development techniques have been steadily evolving since their humble beginnings. Rapid changes in technology and increasing technical requirements make staying on top of website development increasingly difficult. Please read my article; Preparing for professional website design services for more information on the subject.
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