It’s been a big year in the online world.
If you’ve been in business for a while you’ve probably seen big time changes since the early days of the web.
It’s not really possible anymore just put up a basic website and have customers magically find it.
People are accessing more content through more channels and with more devices today. This puts pressure on businesses to create websites that have the power to sell their goods and services all the time.
It seems simple, but a lot goes into creating a website that is a powerful salesperson.
There are a lot of topics to discuss regarding your business website design in 2014, but these are the three biggest.
1. Mobile And Local
Have you seen anyone using a smartphone lately?
We won’t say that everyone has a smartphone, but it’s becoming obvious that with each passing year that more people will have access to the Internet with their phones.
This is a big deal for businesses on a few different levels.
First, the mobile phone doesn’t give you as much space to sell your goods and services. You have to get creative with your content, which we talked about in this post.
Second, people are using their phones to find all kinds of information including local information. The local business is really being empowered like never before and in 2014 this trend will continue.
Action Steps: When you hire a designer to work on your site make sure you discuss responsive design. You need your website to give mobile visitors a good experience so you can earn their trust and earn their business. Also focus on making sure your contact information is on your website where it’s easy for people to find – header, footer and contact page. You want your visitors to be able to find your local business. You can also create content now that will appear in searches based on where a person is when they are searching. Fresh content, which we’ll talk about below, is good for this.
2. Video And Interactive Content
Video numbers are really growing. People are watching more video than ever before especially online.
And it’s not only video. Interactive images and graphics are becoming popular. People continue to read textual content, but visual content is important. Even things like podcasts, webinars and other things are growing in popularity.
You’ll read a lot about SEO and what you can do to get traffic from organic traffic, but today your SEO strategy is your content strategy.
The content you create goes beyond search as well. It helps you with your social campaigns and any other campaign you do to get traffic to your site.
When designing your site in 2014, focus on video and other content. It’s necessary for earning new visitors, earning their trust and earning their business.
Action Steps: Meet with your designer. Talk about where you can use video on your site. Connect with a videographer, someone that knows about video, and have them help you with a video strategy. Your designer should also be able to help you with creating graphics that you can use to add new life to your existing content like your FAQ page.
3. Fresh Content And Promotion
Finally, fresh content.
This one is actually not new. Google mentioned the importance of fresh content and fresh results some time ago. What Google noticed is that the people searching for information generally placed importance on fresh content. Not in every case, but in many cases.
As a result, Google puts a preference on fresh content.
But don’t just focus on Google. Your focus is on your customer. They want fresh content.
Start something like a blog. This allows you to create fresh content to attract new readers. But it goes beyond just creating the content. Build your social audiences so you can promote your content. Build your email lists so you can promote your content. Do guest articles for those with existing audiences. Expose your brand and your blog to other audiences to build your audiences.
Action Step: Have your designer help you with a blog. Work with your team to develop a blogging strategy and a strategy for promoting your content.
Conclusion
If your company has fallen behind in the last few years you’re probably looking at web design as a potential way to turn things around.
That’s good.
The things mentioned above are where your focus should be when you speak with web designers and developers. It’s also what you should look at when you’re discussing marketing strategy with your internal team or with your vendors.
These are the biggest issues for 2014 and they will be in the coming years.
