Tips for Making Your Website Look and Act Professional

When you started your business, it was probably a pretty small affair — just you bent over the kitchen table into ungodly hours of the night, trying to bring your dream to life.

And when you set up your first website for your business, it’s likely you had a computer-savvy friend whip something up in an hour.

But as your business grows from amateur hour to a professional outfit, it’s important for your online presence to grow with it.

Regardless of whether your focus is in retail, specialty services, or something else, a professional website can help spread the word about your business, give potential customers faith in the legitimacy of your company, and ultimately turn a “maybe” client into a “you betchya” client.

For example, when BKMedia’s web design experts built a new website for our client Steuben Press, the results were stunning. Requests for quotes on their site increased by over 240% in just one year!

To compete with the best in your field, your website needs to work quickly and reliably. And it needs to effectively communicate your brand and direct traffic down the sales funnel — all while looking great on computers, smartphones and tablets.

Join the ranks of businesses who are making big strides online with a professional overhaul of your website. 

From getting mobile-friendly to getting into the original content game, here are 5 ways you can make your website more professional.

Speed It Up

Professional websites load quickly and reliably. So if your website is neither, it’s time to get it up-to-speed (get it?). 

Did you know that for every extra second it takes your site to load, 4 to 5% of visitors will leave to find what they’re looking for elsewhere?

A 5 second load time could lose you 25% of potential clients before they even have the chance to find out what you’re all about.

In addition to retaining traffic, a fast website comes with more than a handful of other benefits:

• Higher search ranking
• More likely to show up on social media feeds
• Increased sales — the slower your site, the less likely people will buy what you’re selling. The faster, the more likely. For example, Amazon found that they lost 1% of revenue for every extra 100ms it took for pages to load.

A professional design is optimized for speed.

Speed up your website with the following tips:

• Resize images
• Compress images
• Use web fonts
• Utilize CSS effects where possible
• Upgrade to faster web hosting
• Create a minimal design with only essential images, effects, and colors

On that last tip, you should note that a minimal design will also just look more professional, make your site easier to navigate and allow your brand to consistently shine through on every page of your site.

Make It Mobile-Friendly

Nearly 70% of web browsing and over a third of all e-commerce last year was done on mobile devices. And those numbers are going up.

By 2021, it’s expected that over half of e-commerce will be mobile.

That means if you’re website isn’t easy to use on a smartphone, you’re giving up on a huge number of potential customers.

Follow these tips to help bring your website into the mobile era:

• Make it fast (see above)
• Use fluid layouts that adapt to different screen sizes
• Design for the finger
• Don’t use pop-ups
• Avoid Flash
• Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tester

Provide Unique, Original Content

If you want people to trust you and your business, you need to provide original content they can only get from your website. 

This could be in the form of unique images and videos and helpful infographics and blogs.

Unique content can drive organic traffic. Organic traffic is users who are finding your site on their own, through Google searches or shared links on social media (rather than through paid ads).

And organic traffic is the most valuable traffic you can get for your budget. In fact, it’s 61% cheaper to get customers through your content than through outbound marketing.

You’ll be perceived as professional if it’s clear you know your business and can communicate about it eloquently. That of course means proper spelling and grammar.

But even properly spelled and informed content can still be unprofessional. 

Professional websites have professional copy written by top-notch writers who know digital marketing.  

If you’re interested in creating infographics or videos, the same rule applies. You’ll be better off hiring a professional to create that content rather than trying to do it yourself on your smartphone.

Choose Easy-to-Read Fonts

Your content won’t make a difference if it’s unreadable.

You want fonts that are simple, readable, and that evoke the spirit of your brand.

Some tips for how to choose fonts and text styles on your website:

• All your text should be easily readable.
• Headers and titles should be larger than other copy.
• Create contrast and improve readability by making header text and titles bold or in a different (though complementary) color.
• Dark text on a light background is easier to read than the inverse.

Choose One Clear CTA

A CTA is a “call-to-action” for your site’s users. Depending on where they are in the buyer funnel, a CTA could be joining your email newsletter list, reading another blog, getting a quote and more.

Every page on your site is better off with one primary CTA that takes your visitor where you want them to go. Too many CTAs are confusing, especially when combined with poor design. 

The result is likely to be a site visitor who doesn’t click on any of them.

A single, well-placed and well-designed CTA can help you guide traffic through your site without getting stopped up.

But on top of minimizing distractions, you also need to choose the right CTA. When BKMedia changed a client’s CTA from “Sign Up Now!” to “Learn How It Works!”, sales doubled.

These steps are just the first to achieving your business’ maximum potential online. If you want to take full advantage of what a first-rate digital marketing strategy can do for your business, BKMedia can help.

We offer you more than just a pretty website. Our designs are catered to your business’ needs and are expertly crafted to drive traffic, increase interest, and boost revenue.

Plus, there are even more reasons to hire a digital marketing agency like BK. 

Because not only will we make you a perfect website, we’ll also fill it with great SEO (search engine optimized) content, build your email list, and create and manage newsletter, social media, and online advertising campaigns.

 

Learn more about our web design and development services, and get started with BK today »