Today’s video discusses website design and why it is extremely important for every business out there. Our focus of the month for August is some of the full service digital marketing services that we offer, which you can learn more about here. Be sure to follow our social media accounts @focusengage and drop a sub on our YouTube channel! We will continue to push out focused content on a variety of topics in the coming months.

Focused On The Road Episode 9 Transcript

Hey, this is Bo with Focused Engagement. So I started making Focused On The Road on my way in today and my battery died. So here’s Focused On The Road, well Focused In The Office I guess. If I didn’t do it today, Kyle’s going to get mad at me. So I know Kyle, this is the second time I’ve let my battery die. I will work on that, I promise.

Today’s focus is on website design, the importance of website design, and some key features you need to look at. So important thing to remember about your website: it is your best salesperson. He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t ask for raises, doesn’t ask for vacations, and it should be up 99.99% of the time.

It should always put your best foot forward. So when you look at your website, look at it and say “Does this represent my company? Is this the image I want to portray? Does it have the information I want people to know about me and my company?” So that’s key number one. Now a lot of that is personal preference

It’s hard to say exactly in that aspect what works and what doesn’t, because you may think your website’s beautiful. Somebody else may not. My only suggestion there is once you have a site that you think looks really good, start checking the data, check your Google analytics, see what your bounce rate is, see how long people are staying on the page to see if people are going to the pages you want them to go to.

That will help you understand what others think about your website. And that’s really one of the keys because the website is not designed for you, it’s designed for your customers right? So they have to like it. Other things you can do in that aspect is that you can actually send out surveys.

Survey your customers. “Hey, what do you think about our website? What could we do to improve it? What would you like to see on it?” So beyond that, some other key features of website you need to worry about: number one, speed. Websites should be loading in seconds. And the longer it takes to load, the more likely somebody is to leave the site before they do anything.

That’s called a bounce rate. It means somebody went to your site and they left it before they had any time to do any sort of interactions whatsoever so they bounced off. So the higher the bounce percentage, the worse it is. You really want to have a bounce rate and as low as possible. A bounce rate in the thirties would be great.

Most sites I see are around 40%, which is great. You got 60% of the people staying on your site for at least a given period of time. A second feature to start really considering is mobile first friendliness.

This is another aspect you can look at in Google Analytics, which is actually give you my third one. Make sure you have Google Analytics, the code on your site, so you can really see what’s going on. But, I have seen depending on the industries, especially business to consumer facing companies, 60 to 80% of the traffic from their website is from a mobile app.

Most of it’s from a phone, some of it’s from a tablet, 60 to 80%. If your site is not extremely mobile friendly, if you had to choose between something that looks really good on a mobile app, but not so good on desktop, take the mobile. Make sure it looks good on mobile, especially if you’re a business to consumer, but again, let the data really speak for you there. So check out your Google Analytics. There’s a whole section that will show you how many people came to your site, right? From a mobile app versus tablet versus desktop.

It’ll even show you the browser. So you know which browsers are the most common and whichever device is most common. Build your site, optimized for that device. Business to business, a lot of my business to business customers, it’s only maybe 20% mobile so I wouldn’t worry so much about it on your business at the business. Unless, again, the data says differently. Check your Google Analytics and make sure you see what works for your industry. Every industry is different. Every business is different. Every businesses customers are different. Your buyer persona is going to speak a lot to what kind of customer you’re looking for and who you want to build your website for. All the tips I’m giving you need to be analyzed through the data so that you know what’s important for your website versus even your competitors website, even if it’s in the same industry.

They may be going after a different market niche that. It looks at websites differently than the market niche you’re going after. So the sales has to be data driven, which actually is another good point. You could look at a competitor, but don’t just assume because you like the way their website loops and then you like the data they have that they’re doing better.

They may be, they may not be. I have seen sites that look beautiful, but function horribly and don’t get the job done and you look at them and you say, “Oh man, I got to really copy what they’re doing because it looks so good”. They may be sucking, you don’t know. And I doubt you’ll ever know because they’re not going to tell you how they’re going to tell you they’re doing great.

I’ve seen it. You don’t just look at a site and say, “Oh, I gotta emulate that site”. Go off the data so you can decide we’re really talking for your clients and your customers, not somebody else’s site. Not anything else. I don’t care what they say on Facebook. I don’t care the videos that they have.This is data driven. So these are some key features, but make sure it’s all data driven.

Okay, next one. You need to worry about your website. Since it is a sales tool, it has to generate sales. I have to generate leads. It has to generate something. So make sure you have really good lead-generating forms, not just a contact for us form where it’s name, email, address, phone number and message. 99% of those are filled out by spammers. In fact, ironically enough, I see a lot of emails coming through through those contact messages to say we could send out a hundred thousand messages a day through these contact messages.

Yeah, but it’s spam and you can delete it. It’s junk, don’t do it. If somebody reaches out to you, don’t do that, please. Okay. But let’s get away from these, these lame boring, do nothing for them. And let’s take that lead form and really transform it into something that’s going to help you.

So, tie it to a white paper, tie it to a download, tie it to a quote, tie it to something where you can gather useful information. It’s going to help you solve your customer’s problem and not become a magnet for spam. Okay. So really good functioning forms. So those are the tips I have right now. There’s probably a few others, but I never write this stuff down. It’s just, what’s on the top of my head.

So, Kyle is going to write a good blog about this. We’re going to talk about this on Focused Friday. We should be able to get you more information. Do you have any questions about this topic? If you think I rambled too much, please let me know. Any suggestions, anything that you can leave a comment on this video, you can email us, you can call us however you want to get a hold of us. We’re here for you.

This is Bo with Focused – kind of – On The Road. Have a great day.