The meeting could go like this: “Do we really need to hire a web design firm in Myrtle Beach, SC to update our company’s site? Don’t we have enough smart people in-house to do it?” After all, how hard could it be? Especially if you already have a website to start from—outdated though it may be—can’t you just refresh your logo, change up the color scheme, write some new text, and present the world with a fresh-looking website that will draw in hundreds of new customers?
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A few months later, this hypothetical company is very likely to make the call to their local web design firm after all, frustrated by the lack of results generated by their experiment. Why is it so hard to upgrade a website? Here are a few of the biggest reasons the world of web design is so unforgiving, and why it’s critical to have industry experts handle it for your company.
Don’t take chances with your website.
Mobile Device Performance
Smartphones, iPhones, and other small mobile devices have really driven the biggest changes in website design over the past decade or so. In general, it is very difficult to design and build a website that you can count on to load immediately, function perfectly, and serve each customer well on a wide variety of different screen sizes, shapes, and user interface systems. But that’s the standard that your website absolutely must measure up to if you expect to garner views and conversions from mobile device users.
Load Time Factors
You can probably testify from personal experience that a web page that takes more than a couple of seconds to load loses a huge amount of appeal for you. If you have to navigate to more than two or three pages on that website during your visit, your sense of frustration is multiplied, and it’s nearly certain that you will head back to Google rather than put up with the slow load times and keep browsing the site. High-definition photos, videos, interactive elements, and other features that can really improve your website can all make page load times slower if you don’t set them up correctly.
Get it all with the help of our experts.
Calls To Action
You have to be very careful and balanced about the way you ask visitors to your website to interact with you. Hitting a visitor within the first two seconds of their visit with a request to buy something or sign up for a newsletter doesn’t make much sense—they don’t even know who you are or what you’re offering yet, and few people are willing to make a commitment at that point. On the other hand, if you never present a clear path to conversion, you force your visitors to search for a way to get in touch with you and actually make it harder for them to become a customer.
Special tools like pop-up windows and live chat are very effective when used in just the right way. More often than not, however, they are misused in ways that prevent the visitor from moving around the website at their own pace and block their view of content that they are interested in reading. Each time your website “bugs” the visitor in this way, you take another chance on driving them away for good.
Landing Pages
Landing page design and implementation is complicated, and thus not a part of most in-house website designs or upgrades. But landing pages are perhaps the most important tool at your disposal if you hope to draw in large numbers of visitors from the search results pages. Landing pages increase the number of different keyword searches your website can perform well in, thus expanding your overall exposure to search engine users. They also give those searchers a website experience that is focused on the specific product or service that they searched for, making it easier for them to understand exactly how your company can serve them in the way they need it to.
Time to Upgrade
Is it time to upgrade your company’s website and start reaching more visitors? If so, don’t try to go it alone. Get in touch with PalmettoSoft, your expert web design firm in Myrtle Beach, SC, and get a beautiful, highly functioning website as quickly as possible.
