Come on; how long has it been since you’ve trusted a company with a bad website? Or perhaps not even a website at all?
A world that is increasingly digital means that your website is more than just an accessory that complements your marketing strategies. Actually, it’s the base of your business presence, which may very well be the only first impression potential customers get of your company. But surprisingly, the importance of a well-designed and well-functional website still remains grossly underappreciated.
Allow me, your humble freelance web designer to walk you step by step through the reasons why an excellent website is more important now than ever before—with hard data, telling examples, and potentially a new way of thinking about your presence on the Internet.
Your Website Is Your 24/7 Sales Representative
Consider this fact: while you are sleeping, your website works. Also, when you go on vacation, your website keeps on working. And when you attend to one customer, your website serves other customers at the same time.
A study released by GE Capital found that 81% of consumers do research on the Internet before making a purchase. This is the reality of the Internet age: potential customers form opinions of your business even before they step foot into your business location or make phone contact with it.
Your website functions as a continually accessible representative that:
- Answers frequently asked questions at 3 AM
- Showcases your products or services to
- Generates business leads whilst you run the business
- Offers detailed information without involving staff personnel
A study conducted by the Web Credibility Research at Stanford University showed that 75% of users confessed that they judged the credibility of a company based on the layout of their websites. This is an alarming fact given that most purchase decisions occur only seconds after users visit the page.
First Impressions Happen in Milliseconds
This makes the following point even more compelling: the Missouri University of Science and Technology found that it only takes an average of 2.6 seconds for the user’s eyes to move to the part of the website that impacts the first impression the most.
Additionally, research published by the Behaviour & Information Technology journal revealed that visual appeal can even be judged after only 50 milliseconds. This is even shorter than the blink of an eye.
What does this mean for your business? If your website appears outdated, functions poorly, or just plain looks unprofessional, prospects are forming negative opinions of your business as a whole even before they’ve read the first word of your content.
A case at hand could be the Walmart.com redesign that took place back in 2018. By focusing on improving the user experience and page load times on their own website, they found that their users received an additional 2% boost in conversions every time the page loaded 1 second faster. This could mean tens of millions of extra dollars at Walmart.com’s scale just because their own websites performed better.
Mobile Responsiveness Isn’t Optional Anymore
Remember the early days when being mobile-friendly was considered an advanced approach? Now these are old days.
Google found that 61% of users are unlikely to visit a mobile site again if they have experienced difficulty accessing the site, and 40% of users will switch to a competitor’s site instead. As mobile technology comprises about 58.99% of website traffic as of 2023 (source: Statista), neglecting the optimization of these websites effectively translates to ignoring over half of your potential clientele.
Let me give you an example of how this works. Starbucks redesigned their website with the mobile community at the forefront of their thinking. What did they do? They made it so that their customers could easily access their store locator functions and reward accounts on their mobile devices. This mobile-first strategy played an integral part in the successful development of their digital world of transactions.
SEO and Visibility: Being Found Matters
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This marks the intersection of technology and strategy. As reported by the research done by BrightEdge, the organic result receives 53.3% of the visitors on the internet because more than half of the potential visitors come through searching engines like Google.
But the catch? A staggering 75% of users never scroll past the first page of their search results (thanks to the research provided by HubSpot)! And if your website doesn’t appear near the top of the results page, you might as well not exist.
To explain this with an example, consider the case of Canva, the graphic designing software company. They had made very useful and SEO-optimal content that answered certain users’ searches (like “how to create a logo” or the “size of social media images”). This strategy of theirs, combined with their well-designed website, had allowed them to expand their business operations-from being a startup firm to a platform that reportedly had more than 100 million active users every month. Canva’s website wasn’t just an e-brochure but a discovery engine that led their customers their way.
Trust and Credibility in the Digital Age
“The website is the ‘face’ of your business on the Internet. You cannot expect your customers to believe their business with you when this business ‘face appears nowhere!” points out Dr. B.J. Fogg, Director of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Laboratory.
His team of researchers revealed that 94% of first impressions are web design-related; further, 88% of online shoppers are reluctant to go back to the same website after a poor experience.
Reflect on the factors that engender trust on a web page:
- Professional designs that appear up-to-date and finished
- Security elements like SSL certificates (that tiny lock on the browser)
- Clearly stated contact details and address
- Customer testimonials and reviews
- About page that humanizes your business
- Privacy policies and transparent business practices
Basecamp (the company behind the project management software) redesigned their website with an emphasis on the elements that increase trust. More customer testimonials were incorporated, the messaging became more straightforward, and the pricing became completely transparent. This led to increased conversions because visitors trusted the product they were paying for even more.
Look at this and compare it with others that are still sporting outdated designs with broken links or what appears to be sketchy checkout procedures. What makes you think your customers would submit their credit cards on a page that appears unrenovated since the year 2005? Let’s face the fact that if your competition’s websites are better than yours, then they are actually winning business even before the competition begins.
A study conducted by Blue Corona revealed that 48% of individuals rated the design of a website as the number one determining factor of business credibility. And if that’s the potential customer checking out your business versus the competition and their experience on the other website is better-designed, who do you think the customer is going home with?
Let’s consider an example: Two restaurants with equally tasty food operate in the locality. Restaurant A’s website contains:
A very outdated layout designed just eight years ago in
- No online menu (or PDF that’s hard to read on a phone)
- No online order functionality
- Unknown operating hours and location details
Restaurant B’s website contains the following:
- Contemporary, appetizing food photography
- A menu that is easy to navigate and offers filter options based on dietary needs
- Internet based online order and reservation system
- google-maps integration and up-to-date business hours
Which restaurant do you believe places more orders, particularly with new patrons who have never eaten there before? This isn’t hypothetical. Domino’s Pizza turned their company around with an exceptional web experience. At the end of 2008, Domino’s Pizza struggled with falling sales and a poor reputation. Domino’s poured investment into their web experience, developing applications and websites that made order placement extremely easy. By the time of their turn-around in 2018, more than 65% of their business had come through the web, putting them among the biggest e-commerce companies in the U.S.—even bigger than certain retail giants.
Data Collection and Customer Insights
A well-designed website isn’t just an online brochure; it’s a valuable source of insight about your customers.
By using analytics tools such as Google Analytics, your website gathers very valuable information:
- The keywords that users
- What products or services create the most interest
- Where your visitors are coming from (geographically and digitally)
- What keeps the audience interested compared with what makes them walk away
- Which marketing campaigns are actually working
- What Are the Customer’s Questions Before a Conformation?
This approach of relying on data makes it possible for the business owner to make decisions based on facts and not on feelings. One of the most successful cases of this approach could very well be the streaming giant Netflix; their platform generates an immense amount of data regarding the users’ preferences, which then helps them not only predict their interests but even create new series.
Small business owners should apply this principle too. If you realize that users tend to abandon their carts at a particular point, then the issue could potentially be investigated and resolved. Also, if a particular blog post receives lots of visitors, then more information on the topic could be provided.
Cost-Effective Marketing That Scales
As an alternative form of advertising, an excellent website ensures an outstanding rate of return on investment as opposed to other forms of advertising.
As Google asserts, this investment results in an average of $2 being generated on the business’s part for every dollar that the business spends on Google Ads; this only works if the business owns a great website that the visitors are directed to. A poorly designed website with a high bounce rate results in an ineffective campaign despite the campaign being the best.
Cost Breakdown Consideration:
- Billboard price ranges between $1,000-$30,000 per month based on the location.
- A television ad may cost $100,000+ to make and even more just to air it
- Radio advertising requires constant outlays of funds if the campaign is to continue.
On the other hand, an efficient website requires an investment at first but functions continuously with low maintenance costs. Absolutely right; there’s hosting and the need to update periodically, but the cost of customer engagement cannot compare with that of advertising.
Warby Parker’s disruption of the eyewear business occurred exclusively through their website. Through virtual try-ons, easy viewing options, and home try-on programs that could all be accessed through their fantastic website experience, they were able to create a business that reached the billionaire mark while investing significantly lesser amounts on advertisements than the competition.
The Bottom Line: Your Website Is Your Business
And the truth of the matter in the world of 2024 and beyond is this: very likely, your customers never visit your premises but never make a call to your office or set eyes on your person. But they experience the world of your company only on your Website.
Adobe research revealed that 38% of users will abandon their engagement with a website if the content or layout appears unattractive. More than a third of potential customers will form an impression of your business based on the quality of your website.
The only question is whether or not you can afford NOT to invest in a quality Website.
A Good Website:
- Immediately creates credibility and builds trust
- Working around the clock on generating leads and sales
- Offers actionable data to help your business succeed
- Scales with your growth without proportionate cost escalations
- Provides an even playing field against bigger competitors
- Acts as the central point of your overall online marketing activity
As marketing guru Neil Patel continues: “Your website is the hub of your online world, just like a physical storefront. Performance matters, design matters, usability matters.” But if you’re still sitting on the fence about whether investing in your own quality website is worth it, take this into consideration: your competitors are investing right now.
The only question at this point is whether you’ll be there with them or whether they’ll take the customers that could’ve been yours. A great website isn’t just a valuable asset; it’s a requirement—a must-have. And with the world growing more and more digital every day, this fact only becomes more true.