Helpful Tips from Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency
Website Design and Development
If you’re considering building a new website for your business, you may be wondering what type of company to work with on the project. Is it better to hire a web design company that focuses all of their energy on website design and development, or is it better to hire a digital marketing agency that can also provide the comprehensive digital marketing services you need to complement your new website?
While it may seem like working with a company that specializes in web design services is the smart approach, this typically won’t set your business up for success long term. A web design company can build you a website that looks great, but it will most likely lack the other important elements necessary to ensure you end up with a high performing website that drives leads and helps you grow your business.
There are many reasons why you’ll experience better results when you have a digital marketing agency build your website.
Your Digital Marketing Strategy Should Dictate the Specifics of Your Website Design
Why Your Digital Marketing Agency Should Build Your Website
Your website is the centerpiece of your marketing strategy and therefore, it must be optimized to achieve your marketing goals. You’re much more likely to achieve a website built to convert leads, increase sales and grow your business if it is designed within the framework of your digital marketing strategy. If you don’t have your strategy dictate the specifics of your website design, you run the risk that it won’t deliver the performance necessary to deliver your desired results.
When you have a digital marketing agency build your website, you’ll benefit from working with a team of marketing professionals with years of experience creating comprehensive marketing plans to help businesses grow. This ensures your website will be designed with conversion goals in mind from the earliest stages of the project.
One of the ways a digital marketing agency will ensure your new website is built with conversions in mind is by creating a set of detailed buyer personas prior to building the website. This ensures your marketing company understands the behaviors exhibited by your target audience and the messaging that will most resonate with them.
In addition, by working with you to develop your digital marketing strategy prior to building your website, the agency will have a concrete understanding of the specific elements required on your website to achieve your desired goals. This may include:
- Creating a lead magnet piece and accompanying landing page to capture the contact information of leads who will be placed into an email marketing campaign
- Building in complex ecommerce functionality that allows you to sell your products directly to customers from your website
- Creating a series of PPC landing pages to optimize any paid search campaigns you plan to run
- Ensuring you have content to address every stage of the marketing funnel
- Aligning the content and messaging on your website with your social media marketing strategy to ensure there is consistency across all channels
A web design company won’t be working with you to develop your digital marketing strategy and as a result, they won’t have the detailed understanding of what is entailed in this plan or the goals you’re trying to achieve. Therefore, you are much less likely to end up with a website that is optimized to achieve these goals.
Your Website Will Be Designed to Accentuate Your Branding
Your website is one of the most effective tools at your disposal to convey your brand messaging to your audience. A well-crafted brand message creates a series of positive associations between your company, what you stand for, and the moments of happiness you bring to people’s lives. When done effectively, your brand will resonate with your audience on a deep level that goes well beyond simply promoting the products and services you offer. This is critical to building a successful marketing strategy.
Your brand themes should incorporate three critical elements:
- Your offering
- Your culture
- The unique experience you provide
This information should drive the creation of your brand messaging. In order to effectively convey this messaging to your audience, it must be consistently displayed throughout your website as well as in all of your supplemental marketing assets.
When you work with a digital marketing agency, they will help you craft your brand story, and this will become a key differentiator that allows you stand out from your competitors. Having the marketing professionals who craft your brand messaging build your website ensures that this messaging is highlighted throughout the website. It will also be present in your social media profiles, your paid search campaigns, your email marketing campaigns, and every other aspect of your marketing strategy.
When a web design company builds your website, certain elements of your branding, such as your brand colors, typography and imagery, will be incorporated into your website. However, the deeper elements of your brand story are less likely to be accentuated in your website, and this can hurt your ability to connect with your target audience.
Your Website Will Contain Multiple Calls to Action Optimized for Conversions
The primary goals of your website are to generate leads, increase revenue and grow your business. In order to accomplish this, you must have effective calls to action (CTAs) strategically placed throughout your website.
In addition, it’s important that your website feature CTAs that target every stage of the buyer’s journey since not everyone who visits your website will be ready to become a customer. Therefore, you need to include:
- Direct CTAs that target individuals ready to make a decision, such as:
- Schedule a consultation
- Buy now
- Get started
- Transitional CTAs that target individuals who are still in the earlier phases of their decision making process, such as:
- Subscribe to our newsletter
- Download our free guide
- Join our community
- Schedule a demo
- Request a free trial
A digital marketing agency will be judged on how effectively they generate leads and increase your revenue, so you can be confident they will make sure effective CTAs are implemented consistently throughout your website. In addition, they will know the best practices for how to utilize these CTAs, such as:
- The best colors to use to make your CTAs stand out on the page
- The ideal location to place your CTAs on the page
- Which CTAs belong on specific pages to increase the likelihood that they will convert
- The ideal landing pages and forms to create to maximize conversions
While a web design company may include some CTAs on your website, they typically lack the extensive marketing knowledge and experience to ensure your CTAs are leveraged for maximum effect.
Your Website Will Be Designed According to SEO Best Practices
Your website won’t be a powerful lead generation tool if your audience can’t find it. Therefore, designing your website with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind is critical to achieving your desired results.
Most web design companies lack the SEO knowledge and experience to build a website that will rank well. This typically requires the expertise of an SEO specialist. When your website is built by a digital marketing agency, you will benefit from having an SEO professional on the team. This will ensure that your website is build according to SEO best practices.
A digital marketing agency will utilize a variety of tactics to ensure your website is built with SEO in mind:
- Extensive keyword research will be conducted at the onset of the project to ensure your navigation outline contains the pages necessary to rank for the keywords that will be most critical to your success
- Site speed improvements will be implemented to ensure the your page loading speed is as fast as possible (this is an important factor in Google’s search ranking algorithm)
- A mobile friendly, responsive design will be used to ensure your website provides an exceptional experience on all mobile devices (another important factor in Google’s algorithm)
- Content will be written to support your target keywords to ensure these pages contain the information needed to rank well
- On-page optimization will be performed to ensure the correct title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags and links are used to help improve page rankings
- Your website will contain an effective information architecture, making it easy for users to navigate the website and providing Google with strong signals regarding which pages are most important to rank
If you don’t work with a company who has the expertise necessary to design your website with SEO best practices in mind, you’re going to miss out on a lot of traffic that can generate leads and grow your business.
You’ll Have a Cohesive Content Marketing Strategy to Help Grow Your Business
- Helps you tell your story so that your audience can understand what your company stands for
- Provides educational information that builds trust with your audience
- Establishes your business as an industry thought leader, helping you gain credibility
- Supports SEO efforts, making it easier for your audience to find your website
- Provides information that can be reposted on social media platforms to further increase your reach and grow your audience
- Allows you to provide value to your clients in exchange for their contact information (using lead magnet pieces) in order to support your email marketing efforts
A digital marketing agency will be able to provide the content marketing services necessary to drive the results you need:
- They will be able to create the high quality content that resonates with your audience
- They will know how to construct your content in a way that supports your SEO efforts
- They will be able to craft a long-term content plan that drives every component of your digital marketing strategy
- They will make sure you have content that addresses every persona in your target audience and that hits every phase of the buyer’s journey
Most web design companies won’t have an experienced content team in-house. This means your team may be responsible for creating the quality content you need. Most businesses lack both the time to create the large quantity of content needed for a new website project and the knowledge necessary to ensure this content maximizes your marketing performance.
You’ll Generate the Right Intelligence Data to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Marketing Efforts
One of the benefits of digital marketing compared to traditional marketing is that you have access to a wealth of data that can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts and provide insights on how to improve your results over time. When your website is built by a digital marketing agency, they will have a clear understanding of your overall marketing goals from the outset of the project. This will allow them to compile all relevant data and set up the proper testing to evaluate your performance. As they run your ongoing marketing after your website launches, your digital marketing agency will leverage this intelligence data to improve your results and help your business grow.
Webolutions Can Create a High Performing Website That Grows Your Business
Webolutions Web Design Company
If you’re in need of a new website for your business, Webolutions can help. As Denver’s leading digital marketing agency since 1994, we provide the comprehensive digital marketing services necessary to help your business grow and thrive.
We’ve been ranked among Denver’s largest web designers/developers by the Denver Business Journal every year since 2002, and our award winning websites have delivered the exceptional marketing results our clients need.
Our exclusive Websites Right Methodology™ has been developed and refined over the past three decades based on our extensive experience building thousands of websites. This fully integrated, strategic approach to website development delivers a better client experience and vastly superior marketing performance. Our Websites Right Methodology™ sets you up for success by:
- Creating a collaborative process that documents your website goals at the start of the project so that we can measure success during the development process and over time after the website goes live
- Planning your home page key elements in detail to ensure this important page of your website effectively conveys your brand story
- Creating detailed website mockups to ensure the design looks right and exceeds your expectations before we build the website
- Documenting all functional requirements before building the website to ensure everyone involved in the project is aligned on what is expected
- Creating a comprehensive project plan that details all deadlines and keeps the project moving forward
- Providing weekly status updates to keep your team aware of our progress and ensure you always know when it’s time for you to provide specific assets or complete certain tasks
- Utilizing a variety of third-party tools to enhance your website’s functionality
- Performing custom programming and development to ensure all functionality requirements are implemented properly
- Performing comprehensive pre-launch website testing to ensure the website functions properly and provides a great experience on all browsers and devices
- Providing tactical content leadership to convey your story and establish your business as a thought leader
- Utilizing SEO best practices to improve your search rankings
- Conducting post-launch testing and ongoing analysis to ensure your website delivers the exceptional results you need year after year
This meticulous approach to website design, along with the extensive digital marketing services we provide, will set your business up for greater success. We can help you build a website that maximizes the ROI on your marketing efforts, helping you generate more leads, increase your revenue and grow your business.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Webolutions serves businesses nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.
