First impressions matter. No one wants to arrive at a terrible looking website. And more importantly, with the plethora of competitors across industries at a consumer’s disposal, no one has time to browse a terrible looking website.
2. As an online brand, your website is your first impression. While the shopper may find you through a variety of different channels, once they arrive, it’s about convincing them to linger through the “racks,” rather than to pass by the window. An underdeveloped mash of pages with unappealing color combinations, poor navigation, and abundance of Comic Sans font is probably not going to encourage potential customers to browse. In order to avoid a bad first impression, start by investing in the look and feel of your brand as a whole—the logo, color scheme, taglines, and voice. Emphasize the appeal of the homepage with a proper balance of visuals and educational context for whatever your target audience may be. The person browsing may not be in the purchase stage of the customer journey—but rather still in the awareness and consideration stage. Use your website to provide context around your products that these browsers need in order to buy. Depending on your industry, consider including real customer photos, tutorials, recipes, and more.
3. Focus on Mobile Responsiveness
With a smartphone in hand, the days of shopping via desktop are being quickly replaced by mobile scrolling. Mobile sales alone for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2016 topped $1 billion! This trend proves that mobile is here to stay. It’s time that all retailers build our their shopping experience on mobile. Greater access to Internet connections and data packages makes this possible but—as we’ve already learned—not all websites are created equal.
Browsing a website with poor mobile responsiveness can prove incredibly frustrating for consumers and easily lead to cart abandonment. Make sure your business’ website is functional across as many devices as possible, and consider how layouts of all content types will transfer onto smaller screens. For example, a photo of quality size and resolution on desktop may prove less effective when opened in mobile browsing. Be conscious of the devices that customers are operating on so that the experience remains streamlined across the board.
4. Be Mindful of Website Speed
A beautiful website that takes ten or more seconds to load is most likely a beautiful website few customers will actually stick around to appreciate. Time is money, possibly more so online, than it is in person. As a general rule of thumb, aim to keep website load time at three seconds or less, to ensure visitors won’t grow impatient and close that window. According to the founder of Just Add Content, Gabriel A. Mays, the “biggest threat [to a business’ website] isn’t a competitor, it’s the back button.
5. When incorporating third party applications or displays onto your site, make sure that they do not slow your site down. Their added benefit may not outweigh their added cost if your load time increases.
Leave Comment