There is a fact that cannot be changed, and that is that the sole purpose of one going into business is to make a profit by selling either a product, service, or an idea.
The second indisputable fact is that technology has become an integrated part of our everyday life, such that if you are still operating your business in the analogous way of doing business, it will be near impossible for one to survive in this era.
It is quite fascinating to think back to how far we have come as humans from the medieval age to the point where we can, in real-time stay connected to the whole world just with a small device (smartphone) at the palm of our hands.
That is why now, more than ever one needs to be on the world wide web to be able to reach the whole world—as the internet has provided a means for entrepreneurs to display/market their goods and services to every corner of the globe.
But in having a website, there are certain hurdles, pitfalls, tweaks, and improvements usually overlooked by unsuspecting website owners, which is generally detrimental to the overall success of their business.
Because—let’s face it—the more traffic you have, the better chance you have of converting some of your website visitors to customers and even possible recurring clients.
Here are some few tips on how you can distinguish your website for—what I call—optimized brand impact.
UI Design
UI design stands for user interface design. It is the first perception of the impression people have of you and your company. You as a business owner might be wondering “why do I need a unique interface for my website—well, it will shock you to know that statistics have it that the first impression people have of your business is a 70% determinant factor if people are going to be converted to customers or just visitors.
So it is crucial that you, as a business owner, should endeavor to put in a lot of effort into making your web site not only appealing and catchy but also pleasantly interactive as well. You can easily learn to make these tweaks on sites like career foundry.
According to the psychology of colors, we know that some colors are naturally soothing to our nerves and senses—and that should be the goal as a website owner—first, you make your visitors comfortable then you engage them before delivering or making them an offer.
UX design
This is means user experience. Now you will notice that we talked about user interface design first, and it is outlined that way for a reason because first the user or visitor visits your website and is welcomed with a beautiful and engaging appearance, then the next thing you want them to have, is an overall quality user experience.
What will be the point of having a good landing page and user interface if the overall experience is quite tacky? look at it this way, if you visit a restaurant that is in a beautiful location with an immaculate interior and an outstanding customer service, but has terrible cooking, that supposedly leaves you with a sore taste in your mouth.
I’m guessing you will never patronize that restaurant again—the same goes for a website with a quack or substandard user experience.
Speed
With technology being fast and responsive, people have become accustomed to fast and responsive services—and a website is no exception.
Nobody wants or has the patience to wait for a few minutes while your web page is loading. I mean…! put yourself in their shoes, how will you feel trying to open a website and it’s taking ages for it to open? That is why it is vital to make sure that the speed and response time for your website is in 2 or 3 seconds.
You don’t believe me? here is a publication by Kissmetrics, that states that 47 percent of visitors requires a website to open in less than 3 seconds, and 38-40 percent of visitors will abandon the website if the loading or opening process takes longer than 3 seconds.
Reduce the Advertisement on your website
It is true that the purpose of the website is to make money, but like Newton’s third law of motion states, for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction, by implication in this context, it means if you clog your website with a lot of advertisement—then people are going to be irritated with adverts popping out from every angle of your website.
It is therefore advisable to keep a moderate amount of advertisement on your website.
In conclusion
We are going to summarize everything we have talked about thus far with one more point—and that is the issue of hosting.
When choosing a hosting service for your website it is essential to choose a service that has little or no annual downtime.
You don’t want people to visit and find that your business is temporarily shut down.
Nicola Holder 