How To Choose a Web Design Agency

Praise Sim, Copywriter, GENIA

23 July 2020

“Your website is the center of your digital marketing world — the place that all digital rivers run toward.” (source)

A company’s web design is important for many reasons. 

Firstly, it sets the first impression on the reader. The most powerful message from your website is conveyed through its visual appeal. Within seconds a viewer will be able to determine whether he or she will continue staying on the page, and in these first few seconds, it is critical to make a positive impact on your audience. 

According to a study by Stanford, 75% of people form a judgement on the credibility of your business based on the visual design of your site itself. The first impression you make on a user can easily make or break the prospect of conversion. 

Second, and often overlooked is the impact of a search engine-optimised website on organic traffic. Every business, with no exception, creates a website with an audience in mind. A beautifully designed and informative website is of no use if it’s not shown to the right audience. Naturally, it should be every business’ objective to garner more traffic to their website. 

Needless to say, Google, on its own, drives 8 times more traffic than all social media networks combined.

The fact is, if your website isn’t showing up on the first page of Google, you can expect minimal to no visitors to the content and design you put painstaking effort into. You simply aren’t serving your website justice if you don’t invest time and effort into ranking your page the first page of Google. 

To get to the first page, however, is no easy feat, and requires a long-term strategy of first ensuring your website is SEO-friendly, and subsequently practicing good SEO tactics. 

WebFX puts it best, “If your on-page SEO fundamentals are not up to snuff, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle for visibility from the start.” 

And this is absolutely true, given that the largest source of traffic generally comes from organic search. Unfortunately, most businesses do not think about SEO until after having a website designed. 

Source

Why is a Search Engine Optimised website so important?

Making a website SEO friendly is the process of allowing search engines, like Google, to explore pages across the site. Doing so allows the search engine to easily crawl and understand your content, which results in greater visibility in their result pages. When the Google algorithm thinks that your content provides value to a user according to their search query, your site will appear on the first page of the search results.

1. Greater visibility on Google helps your target audience find your site. 

SEO helps you to get your information in front of your target audience as they are actively searching for it. As consumers today rely heavily on search engines to help them assess and find everything, you can expect that your target audience is likely to be searching for products or services like yours on Google. And there is a reason why the first page has the most coveted spots across all search results –– according to backlinko, the top 3 Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks.

To be able to reap the benefits of Google, your website needs to show up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for keywords related to the products or services that you offer. This is why getting your website indexed on Google is a critical process in web design! 

Unfortunately, Search engines like Google don’t just update automatically. They rely on web crawlers to find new sites and pages and to do so it needs to figure out what that new site or page is about. Keeping in mind that Google is primarily interested in ensuring good overall user experience on your site, its goal is to match the user intention behind the search with the most relevant content. 

The crawlers are at work 24/7 noting new changes which are then added to the searchable index that Google maintains. These pages are, however, only added if they have been vetted to contain quality content that does not trigger any alarms by adopting shady tactics like keyword stuffing or building low-quality backlinks from unreputable sources.

2. It can boost your credibility and authority. 

Having credibility means that your customers trust that your brand is safe and trustworthy. Without the basic level of trust, generating leads, selling or even attracting visitors becomes an impossible task. A good SEO strategy combined with content marketing can help accelerate the process of building a relationship of trust between you and your target audience. 

Consumers today have access to a wealth of resources before they make any decision to buy a product or engage a service. Providing quality and useful content regularly conveys a sense of familiarity and impression of expertise that would gear your audience in favour of whatever you have to offer. 

In fact, web design planning and crafting of content strategy should go hand in hand for the best results. This is because a big part of increasing website visibility on Google is the process of creating optimised content. 

According to Tech Client, content creation is the most effective SEO technique and businesses that post consistent blog content have an average of 434% more pages indexed by search engines than those who don’t publish at all. 

The more content you create, the more pages Google can index and show to your audience whenever a search is relevant. Moreover, having a wealth of content creates more opportunities to incorporate target keywords that signal to Google that your site is relevant to a search and also serves as backlinks to boost your SEO efforts.

3. An optimised website helps you stay ahead of your competitors. 

As mentioned previously, the top 3 Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks. On top of that, 90% of people do not go past page 1 of the Google Search Results. This means that if you’re not ranked on the first page of Google, there is a high chance that you will get no business from Google itself. 

Likewise, if you are ranked well on the first page, you are easily positioned to steal all the business away from your competitors who do not invest in SEO efforts themselves. 

But of course, there is always a good chance that your competitors are just as, or even more savvy than you, and have long put in the effort to rank on Google. This is where having an expert team in SEO makes all the difference. Competitor analysis is a critical strategy in any good SEO agency. The focus is not only to craft the best strategy customised to your needs but to adopt the strategies and tactics that have worked wonders for your competitors. 

The keywords they rank for and the type of content they create can provide tons of useful information that you can learn from and adapt to your own strategy.

4. An optimised website doesn’t require you to pay for ad space. 

This is arguably one of the most attractive aspects of SEO. Having your site run for you 24/7, like that tireless salesperson we all wish we had, makes gaining leads and conversions seamless for any business. PPC advertising comes close to the benefits of SEO, the biggest limitation, however, is that these benefits stop the moment you no longer pay for it. 

This simply means that earning the top few advertising spots on Google involves ongoing costs that could burn a hole through your budget in the long run. Their organic search result counterparts, on the other hand, appear directly below these ads and aren’t paying a cent for their rankings. 

How do I choose the best Web Design Agency for my company? 

Needless to say, any web design provider should be able to deliver aesthetically pleasing and offer designs that keep up with current trends. However, what sets a mediocre web design company apart from an excellent one is the targeted measures taken to ensure that your website is not only designed beautifully but also well-positioned for greater visibility to your target audience.

A good web design company should first and foremost conduct target market research pertaining to your industry. Doing so helps you to understand what your potential customers are interested in and the specific terms they are using to find what they need. Upon identifying the questions and solutions that your target market is searching for, a good web design company will be able to produce the content that best matches their intent and optimise your web pages for these key phrases.

Secondly, a web design company should have a team of trained copywriters to deliver the best content meticulously crafted for each of your pages, according to the target market research conducted by the specialist team. Keeping in mind the agenda of procuring traffic from Google, the team should be trained to create content with targeted keywords tactically incorporated such that Google can quickly pick up on your content, aiding the process of indexing your pages and thereby ranking it where it is relevant.

Lastly, a good web design company should create a website built to have a significant presence on Google, channelling the right consumers to your page, 24/7. By adopting the best practices and strategies for SEO, they can improve your website’s visibility to your target audience by ranking for relevant search results. Which will, in turn, help you garner more high-value traffic to your website improving prospects of conversion.

At GENIA, we specialise in giving our clients up-to-date and beautifully designed websites, creating every page with the intent of ranking well on Google. Working closely with your team, our team of specialists and copywriters will curate the best keywords and content that can help your page get to the first page of Google in the shortest time possible. Fill up the form below or use the WhatsApp button and we’ll have a chat to see if we can help you out!