Websites are essential to a company’s success because many potential clients and customers utilize them to learn about your company and services. While you have likely been on many websites and found some to be more impactful than others, you may not easily be able to replicate features in your web design project.
You’re an expert in your business, not web design, so it makes sense that you may not be able to undertake a whole web design project independently. There are professional web design services like Compete Now that can help design your website. Our team of professionals with over 10 years of experience knows about the best website designs for different industries. If you are interested in learning about our website designing services, click here or call 617-539-6528 to get started.
This blog will outline why you should hire a web designer before creating your website.
Design for Your Goals
A top priority when designing your website is outlining your main goals. Your web designer will need to know your general business goals and goals for your website. As an outside eye, a professional web designer can help ensure information is properly placed. In our experience, many clients tend to oversimplify the content on their website since they are masters of their business’ content. We can help guide navigation options and content areas that will be helpful to website visitors due to our experience building websites in the same industry and learning about your business for the first time.
Professional Expertise
There are many factors that a non-web design professional would not be aware of that could negatively impact their website’s functionality, effectiveness, or search engine ranking. Here are some areas where hiring a web designer could greatly benefit you:
Search Engine Optimization
General website users may not realize that when they are looking for a website on their favorite search engine, there are many factors at play in ranking which websites they will see. Google indexes websites based on factors considered search engine optimization or SEO factors. Most reputable professional web design services will have SEO specialists to help ensure SEO titles, design features, page content, page speed, alternative text, word count, and more are helping advance your website’s reputation based on search engine requirements and preferences. Compete Now also offers ongoing SEO services following your website redesign to ensure it’s competitively ranking.
Page Speed Performance
While waiting for a website to load for more than a few seconds can be frustrating, it can also impact your ranking score on search engines. Page speed is measured by the amount of time it takes for the website to load after a user clicks the link from their search engine results page. In 2010 and 2018 Google made announcements stating that page speed will be taken into account in their search rankings. While page speed may not be the most important ranking factor, it should still be considered because a low page speed could negatively impact your search result ranking. If you want to check your page speed, Google has a tool where you can check your page speed insights.
Image Optimization
Image optimization or image compression reduces the file size of your images. This process does not decrease the image quality while decreasing the size. Optimized images can improve the loading time of a webpage, which is an important ranking factor for search engines. Additionally, image optimization can improve user experience by providing visually appealing content that is easier to understand. By using descriptive file names, alt text, and captions, search engines can better index and rank images on a webpage, making it more likely to be found by users searching for related content.
301 Redirects
If you are redesigning a current website, before launching your new website you will need to complete 301 redirects. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that transfers all search engine ranking power to the rerouted page, according to Moz, an authority in SEO. The HTTP status code for this kind of redirect is 301. To avoid broken pages, which are detrimental to both the user experience and the SEO rating of your website, you must set up 301 redirects on your new website. Web design professionals would have no problem helping you in this process during a website redesign.
Mobile Optimization
When redesigning a website, many are likely conducting their work on a desktop version and not thoroughly testing the website on a mobile browser prior to launching. If you’re considering redesigning your website or designing your first website, you’re likely familiar with the term “mobile-first design,” which is a great method for website design. Our team ensures your website is optimized for all screens by using responsive features to automatically resize all content based on the browser window size. This means your visitor can view the website on a smartphone, tablet, desktop, or even a TV and have a seamless experience.
Installing Analytics Tracking
As soon as your website is live, you should start tracking its metrics. This will start gathering its history right away and provide you a ton of useful information to reflect on in the future. This will enable you to comprehend user behavior on your new website and determine whether it meets its conversion objectives.
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Get StartedDesign Skills for Unique Design
You want your website to stand out, so using popular website design tools with templates may not allow for that. Some website design platforms will require you to compromise on features you’d like or the consistency of your branding. Our team has experience integrating features for e-commerce, donations, form submissions, event calendars, and more to create an engaging website. Limiting the amount of time it takes your website visitors to get to what they need can help increase conversions from your website. Compete Now’s team of experienced web designers prefer to design websites using WordPress.
Why Not Wix or Squarespace?
Some popular website-building platforms are Wix and Squarespace. While some features on those platforms are user-friendly, they are not necessarily the overall best website-building platforms. Both websites allow for use of web design templates. Still, you cannot deviate much from those without coding knowledge, making your website look extremely similar to others using the same template and less likely to stand out. With Wix and Squarespace, what you see is what you get, but WordPress has tens of thousands of available plug-ins to help with customization and other capabilities while Wix has available plug-ins that may require an additional fee to use. While Wix and Squarespace may seem user-friendly, it’s important to know that they can limit your website-building ability in some ways!
Benefits of WordPress
WordPress is a free and open-source platform that offers complete customization to suit your needs. With its vast selection of customizable themes and plugins, WordPress makes creating a unique and professional website easy, even without coding experience. As previously mentioned, SEO has many factors that are all important to helping organically market your website on search engines. WordPress is known for its strong SEO capabilities, which means after some research, you will have the tools you need to help your website rank higher in search engines, leading to more traffic and higher conversion rates.
Another advantage of using WordPress is its thriving community of users and developers. This community provides extensive documentation, tutorials, and support forums that make it easy for you to troubleshoot any issues that may arise during the design process. With their collective expertise, you can rest assured that any problems you encounter will be solved quickly and efficiently.
Maintenance Options
Just as many professional design services will offer SEO services, they will likely offer website maintenance following your website’s launch. Since this professional company built your website, you’re not likely to encounter many technical issues, but no one can prevent hosting errors or plug-in issues. To learn more about Compete Now’s website hosting and maintenance services click here.
Do You Need Help Designing or Redesigning Your Website?
With experience across many industries including non-profits, corporate, restaurants, e-commerce, and more Compete Now is equipped to help you create the website you’ve been thinking about. Click here or call 617-539-6528 to get in touch with our team.
