When Creating a Website, Is Good Copy Enough?

You’ve drafted your website text, and you’re confident the content explains your products or services.  Good web copy is a definite competitive advantage, but is it enough?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.  You need a quality web design, one that underscores your company’s professionalism and gives the visitor confidence that you are trustworthy.

Good web design combines simple navigation with attractive graphics and functionality.

“A creative and professional business website positions you to capture the attention of this audience and familiarize them with your business, thereby making you an option they’ll consider when they need a product or service in your industry,” according to Business Web Profit.

Logical Navigation

A good web designer will help you create a simple navigation.  It should allow your visitors to quickly find the information they seek and complete the tasks they want, whether that’s place an order, subscribe or simply contact you.

Your navigation is not the place to get super creative.  Use terms that your visitors will recognize.  And place buttons where they should logically be, whether that’s a link on the main menu, a selection on a pull-down menu or some other natural position.

Human-Centered Design

The user experience is critical to the success of your website.  Your web designer must try to see things from the customer’s point of view.  What is the customer seeking?  What does she want to do when she lands on your website? How can we simplify the process for her to accomplish her task?

A well-designed website is clean and current. It ensures that users have a positive experience.

Quality digital design centers on the human and is less focused on the craft as an end in itself (the code, graphics, information architecture  and navigation). It takes into account how things work and how they’re used. Apple’s Steve Job once said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Mobile Friendly

Mobile is changing the world. Many people use their smartphone for searching the internet.

In 2020, mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide, according to a study by Statistica. And  CNBC estimates that nearly three quarters of the world will use only their smartphones to access the internet by 2025.

So it’s not surprising that a design trend in 2020 is to create a website choosing one of the following formats for mobile devices:

Responsive website — The webpage content moves in response to the screen size.

Adaptive website — The webpage layout is the same and adapts to different screen sizes.

Mobile-friendly design, whether responsive or adaptive, means your website’s information – images, text, videos, links – is accessible and viewable across all different platforms and, most particularly, on the much smaller screen of smartphones and tablets.

“If you haven’t made your website mobile-friendly, you should,” recommends Google in its online guide. “The majority of users coming to your site are likely to be using a mobile device.”

An Attractive, Polished Look

Applying some basic design guidelines can help your copy look as good as it sounds.  Your web designer should incorporate white space to let the text breathe, use titles and subheads to make the copy scannable, employ bullets to catch the eye, and select an easy-to-read color and font.

Give people a favorable impression of your business with a quality website that’s informative and attractive.

Visuals like graphic elements and photographs should support your copy.  They should tell the same story as your words.

Making your site attractive will give visitors a positive impression about your business and help inspire trust.

SEO Considerations

While your main consideration should always be the user’s experience, the site should also be designed and programmed with the search engines in mind.  In order for those spiders to crawl through your site, the paths must be clear and the navigation properly linked.

Fancy introductions like those made in Flash, can be a barrier that hurts your site’s ranking.  Simple, clean websites that make sense to visitors usually appeal to search engines as well.  Effective SEO can help you achieve high rankings that bring in targeted traffic and steady profits.

The Whole Package

Once your website has been written and designed, it’s ready to go live.  Now you need to generate some traffic.  After all, the most brilliant write-up on the Internet is useless if no one stops by to read it.  If prospects aren’t buying from you, most likely it’s because they don’t know about you.

So how do you get your selling message in front of potential buyers?  How do you reach your best prospective customers without spending a fortune?

Getting your message out to your target audience starts with a well-designed, mobile-friendly website.

The answer is multi-dimensional: a combination of SEO, pay-per-click advertising, Internet PR, e-mail marketing, blogs, online social networking, offline promotions, press releases and more.  Combine those elements along with high quality web design and web copywriting and you have a winning package for success!