New Technology World

About 70 percent of small businesses nationwide have a website, according to a survey earlier this year by digital marketing firm UpCity. If you own a small business, you probably have one too. But when was the last time you updated?

This is important because if your website doesn’t keep up with the latest design trends, you could lose business. His 2015 study by marketing software provider Adobe found that 38% of people would stop using her website if the content or layout was unappealing.

Your website will never look outdated. You can’t slow down. It’s not attractive. So what are the important things you have to do?

First, your site should be mobile friendly. Most visitors, especially younger visitors, are getting their content on their mobile phones. Visitors using these devices should be able to read your site easily. Otherwise, it will quickly move to another location.

Ross Cohen, founder and CEO of GetPhound, a website design firm in Conshohocken, says “mobile-first” design has become very important.

“Some businesses, especially restaurants and the like, get all their traffic from people’s phones,” he said.

Home page design has changed a lot over the last few years due to the popularity of mobile browsing. In the old days, websites used to have a homepage with lots of links to other pages. But thanks to the proliferation of mobile browsers, today’s designers prefer to keep visitors on the home page and scroll down for more content rather than clicking elsewhere.

“People’s attention is limited to scrolling on their phones,” says David Kale, owner of Blue Bell-based website design firm Kale Design. For this reason, according to Kale, the home page has a significant impact on the likelihood of a visitor’s retention.

“The home page is very important to function properly,” says Kale. “We’ve learned that most of the time people don’t even enter the site, so that’s where we spend a lot of our design work. They look at the home page and decide whether to contact you or not.” To do.”

What about pop-ups that ask visitors if they want information, or little boxes that automatically launch videos? I feel annoyed. He dislikes popups that take up the entire screen and are designed to make it difficult for users to find a place to close them.

However, he admits that if you do it right, you can get there. “A minimalist approach is best,” he says Cohen. “Pop-ups, including offers, promotions and even closing pop-ups [users] It can sometimes be good for them to leave to continue shopping. “

When Kale designs sites, he likes to use videos on the home page or popups. That’s because he and a number of studies have found that the use of video significantly increases the amount of time visitors stay on a site, ultimately increasing the frequency of converting visitors into prospects who provide information or purchase products. Because I discovered

“Video is definitely the sweet spot,” he said. “I like having videos on my homepage that are like a minute or a minute and a half. They always seem to have a big impact on engagement.”

The color of the site is also important. According to a survey last year by Top Design Firms, a directory of design, marketing and development firms worldwide, nearly 40% of consumers rated color the most among the visual elements of a business website, with consumers Almost half of (46) %) businesses prefer to use the color blue on their websites.

Cohen likes to recommend dark, “homey” and “tasty” colors like black and red for his restaurant customers, and white, hygienic designs for medical and dental clinics.

“When I think of doctors, I think of things like that,” he said. “If you go to the dentist’s page and see something like black, brown, and green, well, you’re thinking of degraded teeth! Color really sets the tone right away.”

A good website offers many opportunities for visitors to take action, from requesting product brochures to chatting with customer service agents. So getting data from visitors should be an important part of her website design.

A good website is optimized for search engines.

To ensure your site is acceptable to Google and other search engine services, check the links on your site frequently to make sure they are not broken. This also applies to links to your own pages and other websites.

Your site should also load fast. Google provides some great insight into page speed here.

Make sure your site is secured with an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. This is a digital certificate that authenticates her identity on the website and allows for encrypted connections, giving the user some confidence that her information will not be leaked. Stolen.

While the dominant scrolling homepage approach is common, websites require a separate landing page to receive and measure traffic from online advertising campaigns.

All this takes time and constant attention. Inexpensive website builders such as Wix, GoDaddy, and SquareSpace are useful for businesses on a tight budget or needing a simple online presence. However, most established businesses need an experienced website designer to monitor and continuously update their site.

“I think business owners should put it in their calendars to see their website once a quarter,” says Cohen. “It doesn’t take much time and there will always be things that need to be fixed or you could lose visitors and business.”

Gene Marks is a CPA and owner of Marks Group, Bala Cynwyd’s technology and financial management consulting firm.

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