If you’ve been considering web design in Kalamazoo, there’s no better time to start than, well, right now. With companies scrambling to position themselves ahead of their competition, the demand for engaging, high-quality websites has never been higher. And we’re here to tell you: there’s a lot of competition out there! From restaurants looking to attract new employees to manufacturers launching new products, an effective, modern website can help you put your best foot forward and, more importantly, it can help you achieve the goals that you’ve set for your business.
As a way to grow your business, your company’s website is an amazingly powerful tool. In a lot of ways, it’s a 24-hour storefront. Your customers use it to learn about you, browse your products, explore your history, and communicate with you. But, if your site is more than three years old, you may not be leaving a good impression. The Internet moves fast. It grows and reshapes itself daily. Because of this, new technologies emerge that allow you to create more memorable, more impactful customer experiences. If you’re not taking advantage of these technologies, you could be slipping behind. You could be creating opportunities for your competitors to move ahead of you.
In general, there are a lot of reasons to consider a new web design in Kalamazoo. More traffic, more visibility, and more opportunities to generate revenue. Beyond that, it helps to build trust and establish you as an expert in the local market. But, for the sake of completeness, let’s take an in-depth look at five ways a new website works to ensure that your business succeeds.
1. Your customers expect it
No matter your industry, you have a number of high-caliber competitors on the Internet. And, regardless of your company’s size, your customers expect you to match their energy. To be truly effective online, you need to rival giants: Amazon, Walmart, Target, and others. Even if you don’t directly compete with these companies, they’ve set the bar and defined customer expectations. Your website needs to match their usability, accessibility, breadth, and appeal. When customers arrive at your website, they expect the level of convenience offered to them by other websites. They want to quickly find your product specifications, the services you offer, your locations, and countless other essential bits of information.
If you fail to meet your customers’ expectations, you risk driving them to one of your competitors’ sites. But, by understanding their expectations, you can build a website that engages – and converts – your customers. However, to do that, you’ll want to know exactly what to look for in a Kalamazoo web design. A good, local web developer will have their finger on the pulse of the local economy. More importantly, they’ll know how to leverage their skills and your knowledge to create a website that drives traffic, generates leads, and converts sales.
What customers expect from a web design in Kalamazoo
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- An immediate sense of what you offer. Most often, customers arrive at your site to learn about what you offer. If you’ve buried that information deep in your website, you’re creating a frustrating experience. The details of your products and services should be front and center.
- Concise, authoritative content. Customers want to know they’re working with an expert. Your site should focus on providing helpful resources that position you as an authority. Educational blog posts, detailed product specifications, and more can go a long way toward positioning you as a leader in your industry.
- A variety of well-placed contact options. Your site’s visitors want to contact you. If they’ve arrived at your site, they have a need and want your help. After your site’s content has convinced them you can help, visitors will be looking for ways to contact you. Because of this, you should place phone numbers, forms, and physical addresses throughout your site.
- An intuitive way to navigate the site. If your site’s menu is a convoluted tangle of disorganized pages, you’re in trouble. Ideally, no page should ever be more than two clicks away. By streamlining your navigation, combining pages, and removing unnecessary information, you make it easier for your customers to find what they need.
- Third-party testimonials and reviews. Beyond wanting to know who you are, customers want to know what you’ve done. Third-party commentary on your business can go a long way toward building trust and establishing you as a trusted, proven leader in the market.
2. A website in Kalamazoo positions you as an expert
A solid website cements you as an expert in your customers’ minds. By delivering high-quality, informative content, you position yourself as the go-to source for answers about the products and services that you offer. You want to be a resource that people seek out when they have questions. You should aim to teach your visitors how to use products like yours, how to maintain them, how to repair them, and more. Ultimately, if visitors are coming to you with questions, you can be confident that they’ll come to you when they need solutions.
A good web design in Kalamazoo will take a lot of things into consideration. Your design team should encourage you – and inspire you – to develop authoritative content. In addition to positioning you as an expert, content that is informative, factual, and useful can help with your site’s search engine optimization. In this way, expert content attracts more visitors, converts more customers, and creates more opportunities.
Ideas for authoritative website content
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- Tutorials and how-to guides. There’s no better way to prove you’re an expert than by teaching. Tutorials are a great way to show customers that you know your stuff. Teach them how your products work, how to install them, and how to get the most out of them.
- Instructional videos. Videos are an amazing way to increase your site’s interactivity and engagement. Even better, they give a face to your expertise and allow you to build a connection with your customers that goes a long way toward encouraging them to buy.
- Educational blog posts. Creating long blog posts about your offerings might seem tedious but they are massively beneficial to your site. A 2000-word post describing your services and their benefits can dramatically improve your search rankings and customer engagement.
- Informative and ‘evergreen’ content. When creating content for your site, you should focus on evergreen content. This type of content never goes out of date and doesn’t require continual adjustments. Evergreen content is a reliable, trustworthy source of information that will always accurately answer your customers’ questions.
3. A sales tool that never sleeps
As a sales tool, your website is a juggernaut: it doesn’t ask for breaks, it doesn’t forget important sales points, and it never sleeps. Properly tuned, your site can be utilized as a powerful, around-the-clock tool that converts visitors into paying customers. But, this kind of tuning requires a lot of thought and expertise. You’ll need to create a logical sitemap, translate that into an intuitive menu, and then build your site into a funnel that guides visitors along your company’s sales track. By working with an experienced web designer, you can refine and perfect your site’s funnel, ensuring that visitors are transitioning through all the steps and actions necessary to get them to make a purchase, an inquiry, or a request.
When it comes to web design in Kalamazoo, you should work with an agency that has extensive experience. But, often, web design isn’t enough. If you want your website to operate as an effective sales tool, you’ll need a partner with experience in content marketing, local listings management, marketing automation, pay-per-click advertising, and SEO. When combined, all of these disciplines help to aggressively position your website on search engines, convert visitors into buyers, and turn one-time buyers into long-term customers.
Skills to look for in a Kalamazoo website design team
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- Content marketing. If you’ve been keeping up, you know how important it is to create authoritative content. A content marketing expert can help you turn your existing written materials into guides, tutorials, and page content that establishes you as an expert.
- Local listings management. Your company’s listings in local business directories contribute heavily to your ability to be found. A team with experience managing these directories can ensure your details are consistent and that traffic is being driven to the correct locations.
- Marketing automation. These days, staying in touch with your customers is absolutely crucial. A marketing automation specialist can create automated workflows, emails, and tasks that reach out to your customers, encourage them to revisit, and build loyalty.
- Pay-per-click advertising. If you’re having trouble being found, launching a new product, or looking to gain an edge over your competitors on search engines, pay-per-click ads could be the answer. A proven way to get found quickly, these ads immediately place you at the top of Google’s search results.
- Search engine optimization. More than anything, you want your website to be found. Search engine optimization is a long-term strategy that aims to position you aggressively in search results. An SEO expert can help you create regular, authoritative content that boosts your rankings.
4. Capture and act on customer feedback
Every business owner knows that good service is about learning what customers want. If you aren’t in tune with your customers, how can you anticipate their needs? How can you continually improve their experiences? How can you modify your processes to accommodate them and, ultimately, increase your sales? The answer, of course, is that you listen to them. In the past, companies have mailed surveys, performed phone interviews, and used reputation management software to understand their customers. But, your website alone can be a powerful tool that allows you to solicit feedback from your customers.
By integrating a range of contact methods on your site, you can encourage visitors to reach out to you with their questions, comments, and concerns. From these, you can work out what your site’s visitors are expecting. You can discover why visitors aren’t being converted into customers. And, even better, you can begin to understand the reasons why customers have a positive or negative view of your company.
Proven ways to solicit customer feedback
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- Contact forms. Your site needs more contact forms than you think. As a general rule, if a page exists, it needs a contact form. The reason for this is that these forms are the quickest, easiest way for customers to react to the content on that page. If a customer has a question about a product, that product’s page needs a form. If a customer wants to comment on your company’s history, your history page needs a form. Forms are the most effective way to receive feedback from your site’s visitors.
- Telephone calls. A lot of people prefer to speak directly to one of your company’s representatives. Because of this, your phone number should be featured in your site’s footer, header, and on its contact pages. In addition to this, pay very close attention to where your phone number appears on mobile devices, as this is an incredibly useful – and incredibly common – way for people to reach out to you.
- In-store visits. While they aren’t as common as form fills or telephone calls, some customers still prefer in-person visits. Any page built to specifically solicit contacts should include your address, an embedded map, and a link to get directions to your physical location. And, even though these types of contacts aren’t as frequent, they can be far more informative than any other form of contact.
5. A Kalamazoo website is a convenient point of contact
While we’re on the topic of customer contacts, your website is the most convenient way for your customers to reach you. And, while they’re great for soliciting feedback, they’re even better at helping you connect with potential customers. Since contacting you via your website requires very little effort, your site is an extremely short path between your sales department and your customers. By integrating a range of forms, a range of contact methods, and a range of conversion-focused content, you can easily drive traffic directly from your website to your sales team.
Want to get started on a new website design in Kalamazoo?
As the premier Kalamazoo website design team, Creative Marketing Group wants all of our customers to succeed. Incorporating a range of skills, we’re able to assist you with everything you need to develop an effective, memorable online experience. We can provide you with content marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, brand development, and – of course – website design. Our team has decades of experience helping local businesses hone their Internet presence and get found online. Rest assured: we can help you.
No matter the size of your business or the scope of your project, you can be confident that we can work within your specifications and budget. Our portfolio contains a diverse assortment of small, local businesses and massive, national entities. So, if you’re in the market for a new website, we encourage you to contact us today, schedule a free consultation, and learn how we can help.
