05/01/2013

Top 5 Reasons to Update Your Website Design: 1. Functionality

By James Kwon

1. A pretty face… and not much else.

Do you still get that “lovin’ feelin” every time you load your homepage and see all that gorgeous web design staring back at you?  That’s great, it’s important your site fits the look & feel of your brand and makes a good first impression. But if that’s all it does, then you’re missing out on opportunities to reach more potential customers, and it’s time for a website refresh.

In an age when people are increasingly browsing the web from mobile and touch-screen tablet devices it’s important that your site deliver on the promise of a great user experience in any format.  At the very least it should be designed to display properly in these different environments. Have a sales team? This becomes even more important. They should be able to pull up your site and walk a client through your products and service offerings anytime anywhere.

Ok, your site does display properly on mobile and tablet devices, great!  But if you haven’t spent anytime thinking about your UI/UX design -that’s User Interface and User eXperience- then you’re not making the process of learning about your business as fun and engaging as it could be.  Great UI/UX design should make it easy for visitors to explore your site and encourage them to stick around and dig a little deeper.  The longer they stay the more likely they are to make a key decision in the buying process, so be sure you are doing everything you can to keep them there with a good user experience.

Some more questions to ask about your website functionality:

  • How easy is it to find key information about your products and services?
  • Is your most important information easy to get to from your homepage? Pricing, contact info, list of services?
  • Do you answer the most commonly asked questions in a fun and intuitive way?  (FAQs don’t count)
  • Are you displaying your video and photo content in an impactful way?
  • Are you organizing your content in a way that makes sense not just to you, but to your users? (hint: Google Analytics can tell you)

Hopefully these ideas have given you some new ways to look at and evaluate your site.

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It’s probably not realistic to think you’ll have the time to become an expert in all of this… luckily we already are! Let the team at Figmints offer ideas for making your design stronger and smarter. Contact us for a free consultation and we’ll give you a list of suggestions. Of course, we’d be happy to implement those for you too.