If you invest in one thing to improve your business this year, make it web design.
“But I have a website already!”
Of course you do. But, is it giving you plenty of business? The reality is, if you haven’t updated your website within the last three years then the answer is probably no. Having a website that is “good enough” isn’t good enough. It could be causing more harm than good.
Invest in making your website great and you will reap the rewards. If you’re not convinced of this, let’s take a look at some statistics…
Every second counts
You’ve got just 50 milliseconds to make an impression. Yes, you read that correctly. 50 milliseconds is how long it takes for a person to form an opinion about your website. If they don’t like what they see, there is a lot of choice out there and they are likely to move swiftly on.
If they do like what they see, you’ve then got a whopping 15 seconds to deepen their appreciation, otherwise you’ll lose them.
You need to make those precious few seconds count. By having a business website that gives a positive impact immediately, you are going to be capturing more eyes for longer amounts of time. The longer a user lingers, the more likely they are to buy.
Keeping people on your website with a combination of great design, intuitive navigation, and useful, up-to-date content is crucial for those conversion rates.
If it’s broken, fix it
Let’s say you’ve got the user to stay on your home page for more than 15 seconds, but when they start browsing the rest of the site they find it’s tricky to navigate, full of broken links, and bad quality images, all set within a poor layout. You can almost guarantee they’ll be off to one of your competitors before you can say “click to go back.” You can also be fairly sure they won’t have anything good to say about your website either, which reflects badly on your business.
A huge 94% of negative website feedback is design-related. That is not a statistic to ignore since there are few faster ways to kill a business than having negative reviews plastered all over the internet.
Also, 47% of people expect a website to load in two seconds or less and 39% of people will stop engaging with a website if the pages take too long to load. Slow-loading websites cost the retail sector $2.6 billion in revenue each year.
Redesigning your website so it runs at optimum speed with no glitches will gain you customer confidence in no time and ensure you don’t become part of these statistics.
Looks matter
People are always attracted to beauty. It’s human nature. If your website is an ugly duckling in a river full of swans, few will give you a second glance. Beautiful web design matters if you want people to stay longer than a few seconds on your website and read about what you have to offer.
Adobe’s survey showed that if people are given 15 minutes to read some content, two-thirds of them would rather view something beautifully designed. Furthermore, 38% of people will leave a website if they find the content or layout unattractive.
Don’t let an outdated and badly designed website lose you business. A modern design with a considered color scheme and winning typography will go a long way in maintaining your business’s professional appearance.
Who you gonna call?
According to Curatti, 70% of small businesses fail to place clear call-to-action buttons on their websites, and a huge 40% of visitors will leave a website if there’s no clear contact information available.
There’s little point in advertising your products or services if people have no idea how to contact you about them.
No-one likes to search a website for a phone number, so having clear and obvious call-to-action buttons and contact information allows users to easily get in touch. This includes location maps and directions if you have a physical location that customer can visit.
Get mobile
With most people now doing their web browsing via their smartphones, it’s crucial for a business to ensure their website is optimized for this. If not, you could be missing out on a huge chunk of business. 85% of adults now think that the mobile version of a website should be as good as, if not better than the desktop version. You cannot afford to ignore this fact.
Your reputation is at stake
Having a bad website doesn’t only lose you business, it also decreases customer confidence. According to Stanford, 75% of users admit to judging a business’s credentials based on its web design.
Your website must make a good impression, otherwise you run the risk of not only receiving bad reviews, but also generating far fewer repeat customers. E-consultancy says that 88% of people are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience.
Your website needs to inspire trust and reliability to gain repeat business. Redesigning your website to be user-friendly as well as aesthetically pleasing is a smart business move.
Taking all these facts and figures into consideration, there has never been more reasons to put website redesign at the top of your priority list. There’s too much at stake not to do it. If you ignore the needs of your website (and, therefore, the needs of your potential customers) for too long, you risk losing vast amounts of business as well as customer confidence and trust.
Most businesses need to redesign or update their websites routinely, but this doesn’t need to be difficult. It is worth hiring a professional design team that can make light work of keeping your website and your financial services business relevant to modern users.