Usability design is the design that gives your users (customers and prospects) the ability to easily engage with your products without the need of calling for help. What most businesses do not know is that your website is the first point of contact for large percentage of your customers. The phrase “Google it” has become one of the most famous words of our time and it is only going to gain more traction with time. And to make things more intense, most people will even ask in person for your business website than your business cards. And if you do not have a presence on the internet, well too bad, you are not in business. Business website gives customers more assurance of your legitimacy.
Website Design That Works Better
You may be asking yourself as a small business owner if any website design would do, after all, they just want a website. The honest answer is “No!”. Not just any website design would do, and as a matter of fact, it is the best not have one than to have a dodgy and horrible looking website. The reason for this is that since you will not be standing next to your website to explain to your prospective customers that they should not judge your business by your website design. “That’s if your website is dodgy” then there is no one to save your organisation from the negative impact your dodgy looking website will have on your prospective customers.
Years of experience in the industry has shown us that most small business owners really do not put a lot of thoughts or strategies on their business website developments. Most developers who are not equipped with the usability heuristics do not know that poorly developed website can impact business survival from lead generation to customer acquisition and sales. However, building a website with users experience in mind and with great strategy in place will help businesses achieve more with their websites.
In this article, we will go through a few effects on your business of your website.
Your website is your first point of sale.
Your potential customers would subconsciously evaluate your website on their first visit within minutes. As far as they are concerned, if your website does not appeal to them, they will move on to the next website. Within these few minutes, potential customers go on a website, they develop questions like: how up to date are they with the service they are providing? Their subconscious mind is already working through the first landing page they have encountered. And if your website looks like it was one of the first websites in the 1990s when internet was first discovered by Tim, then they will be wondering if they are getting the same old style type of products or services from you in a new box.
Also questions like how effective your communication style is. If the content on your website lacks clarity and is not professionally written, they will be wondering if your internal organisation is structured well enough to tackle or communicate in times of complains.
Website that is designed specially for your niche.
When you hire a website developer to design, develop and implement your website, you need to hire the one who will endeavor to gather accurate requirements about your business. Every business have their niche and because every niche is spectacular to every organisation, website, ecommerce and systems developers alike need to capture and custom design your business according to your niche.
After a prospect forms a general opinion about the quality of a service firm, they move forward (assuming they have not dismissed the firm after forming their first impression) to evaluate whether the specific service offerings apply to their needs. Clients look for specialties.
For example, clients may want to know that a CPA firm has a specialty in “mid-market mergers and acquisitions” or “estate planning for clients with over $1 million in personal assets”.
If the prospect finds the services applicable to them, they may think, “This service specialty is exactly what I am looking for. Therefore on each landing page of your website, what your service is all about needs to be very clear with properties that help any type of prospective customers irrespective of their background to understand and capture what and how you can help to service them.
Your website is your lead generator.
The best way to generate leads without the need to share your profit with any lead generation company is by building and tailoring your website design to generate leads. At the end of the day, you are running a business that wants to make profit and grow. We now know that it does not matter if your business website ranks on top of every Google’s search results, however if it does not have a “Call to action” properly built in the right spot on your website, there is a very high chance that your prospects will close your page and open your competitors website. This is not because they are not interested in patronising you or carrying out transactions with your organisation, that is just because they
cannot be bothered by your badly designed website! We know this by conducting extensive research on one of the best and the most valuable companies in the world “Apple Inc”. Apple products success is based on many things and one of them is the ability to give users a perfectly simple, genius and easy to use products. When you see any Apple products, you immediately know the product is from Apple without the need to check for the manufacturer’s name, why? This is because they are consistent with their design. The lock button is perfectly placed above the iPhones just so your index finger can lock and unlock without you looking for it. This is usability design, giving users the ability to easily use the product.
This usability design gives your customers a sense of conviction to subscribe to your products and that is how you generate leads and convert them to sales.
Now assume you have website visitors that believe your service firmly projects a high-quality image, they know that your service is applicable to them and the site content is satisfactory — what do you do to convert them into buyers or customers? All your website needs is the ability to persuade your prospects to do something positive about their convictions: you have already captured their attention, generated Interest and created a desire for your services. Now you have to get your prospects to take action.
This action may be signing up for a consultation, registering for an event or webinar, inquiring about the service itself, becoming a newsletter subscriber or just simply requesting you to call them back, and this is what we call “Call to action”. Eliciting visitors’ action is a necessary step in converting them from a website visitors into a live prospects and only a website developer who understands the usability heuristics can achieve that.
