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Basic Principles
We are made to believe that designing and launching a website today is made easy and accessible to all with the proliferation of website builder platforms.
Unfortunately for business owners who design their own website using this method only scratches the surface and realistically its often not enough and may result, after a few months in failure to achieve acceptable performance criteria or get noticed on search engines.
Good landing page design calls for neat information architecture and pleasant visuals, yet that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In order to create something that brings results, owners need to dig deeper, look at the bigger picture, learn about their users, their product or service market position (market product fit) and gear up with strong consistent title tags and messages across all media.
Of course, no two target audiences are alike. Luckily, there are some basic principles that can be used as a general rule. In this article, we’ll go through some of the most helpful rules for web designer/owners to better understand what essential elements they should be addressing while creating a successful hi-performing compliant web design.
The Wix Platform
Wix offer exemplary support back-up for their excellent web builder product issuing constant and consistent advice and guidance to designers and customers alike via their Wix blog posting medium.
As a Wix user any advice, pointers, methods, technological advancement and progressive knowledge is of interest to the furtherance of the learning experience to keep abreast of trends and design techniques. It is of great comfort, as a Wix user they place so much emphasis and focus on product development and advice for its users.
However the biggest enemy for owners is time, can they find the time to study the art of web design and SEO?
The core tools for functional websites are accessible to companies of any size, and are designed for those looking to find their footing in a crowded marketplace. With the right product and approach, the door to great success can open to anyone.
Improve Your Websites SEO
With so many sites on the web today, and 576,000 new ones created daily, there is no guarantee that your site will rank first on Google. There are, however, plenty of things you can do to increase your site’s chances of showing up on Google and then ranking well.
Choose the right URL
Create titles and descriptions for each page
Utilize anchor text
Add alt text to all your images
Give your site structure with strong title tags
Create quality content
Do keyword research
Prioritize proactive indexing
Build impactful external links
Track, report and improve
Website owners should take SEO planning seriuosly because its the gateway to ensuring your website is picked up and trawled by search engines, you probably are since you are reading this article. Fortunately for Wix customers they take SEO very seriously as well and provide just the thing in — Wix SEO.
Optimise The Customer Journey
Nothing beats a customer journey that flows. When developing website functionality, make sure to explore the most hassle-free methods of bringing customers into the fold and keeping them there.
It’s important to understand how people engage with your website. By mapping out the consumers’ journey you can understand important touch points and optimise your site performance.
Consider designing landing pages that easily prompt registration and membership, and featuring sign-up forms that are quick to complete at the same time keep it simple and tell visitors why they should use your product or service:
Market Positioning
Before developing strategies and scaling your business define your business purpose to get a clear understanding and sense of what your product or service does and what needs it fulfils.
The "Product Market Fit" is the fundamental starting point that helps to build and develop part of a strategy for a web design. Sometimes a product just isn’t ready yet or its appeal is different than intended or expected.
A thorough product assessment will present useful information about its market appeal that may uncover the need to make minor adjustments to revitalise the product to assist in boosting sales in current or even untapped market sectors.
This new data should be used to identify the ideal target market, promotional content, sales messages and marketing channels, it will also provide insights for the development of a meaningful website design brief.
Master SEO
Whether you write a blog, own a restaurant, or sell shoes, you want your site to show up on some of those searches! That means SEO should be an integral part of your marketing plan and you should treat SEO seriously, spend some time to understand the basic principles and aim to master the process.
The goal of SEO is to help search engines understand what your website is about so they can recommend it to Internet users who will find it useful. Think of Google as a matchmaking service. Based only on a few keywords, search engines try to understand a searcher’s intent and display the websites that will best solve their problem, answer their question, or offer what they are looking for.
If you’re not serious about leveraging SEO, you will soon be lagging behind your competitors and your ranking may suffer as a consequence.
At every phase, you need to make sure that you’ve got search engines working hard on your behalf so constantly monitor search results to improve your ranking on google, so why does SEO matter to your company website?
The key to good SEO is patience, results don't happen overnight so keep at it.
A very usefull article to study is by Ignite Visibility who spell out website owners unrealistic expectations about web owners SEO efforts.
Automate Workflow
A major component of growing a business is educating the owners ability to understand the benefits to automate and repeat the strategy over time.
Without this knowledge and commitment websites are in danger of failing to produce results over time.
To start the automate process owners should discover and learn the numerous Wix Ascend automation tools and programs at their disposal that might aid in the process of growing a business.
Wix Automation is a set of powerful tools that streamline the work process that in turn saves time on manual tasks.
With just a few clicks, owners can send automated emails to customers and site visitors to remind them about their business services and a whole lot more.
GDPR Compliance
Web Designers have a duty of care to advise clients of the importance of basic website functions not least the introduction of the GDPR, this regulation has massive implications for website owners to comply or potentially incur massive non compliance penalty fines.
A clear example of a basic website function today is compliance to the GDPR. Introduced over a year ago there are still websites out there that don't comply, the onus is down to the web designer its his/her duty to build GDPR compliant forms that gather user data information. The GDPR is not a directive its a regulation introduced by the EU to protect and administer personal information used or stored by companies, it demands attention!
Monitor and Improve
Developing an effective SEO strategy today for your business website is a must. All the hard work you put in to create your stunning new Wix website will count for nothing unless your site is seen on search engine results and attracts visitors.
Search engines like Google are a vital source for bringing in new customers, promoting your business, developing your brand image and being visible.
Once your site is indexed start immediately the process of improving your ranking in search results by testing your search phrases, check results regularly and modify phrases as necessary, a good place to start is by testing your search phrases and see what pops up or study your competitors phrases if they are above or below you.
Designer/owners must learn about the complexities of developing an effective SEO strategy.
Learn more about SEO for your site with Wix.
In conclusion web design has become an art/science, real time professional training is a must if owners want their business website to meet performance expectations and should at least devote some quality time to learn the basics, however if this route is not possible then hire a professional Wix web designer.
Feel part of the Wix community.
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Acknowledgements:
https://www.wix.com
https://www.nexdesignagency.com/
https://ignitevisibility.com/
