“They’re a classy team and make me feel important and taken care of. I love them. I don’t have this kind of relationship with every firm. It’s been a great experience.”
Web design in Charlotte.
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Ranked by Clutch 2024
Years 2020 - 2024
4 Years in a Row
Ranked by Clutch 2024
Agency Partner
Ranked by Our Customers
Ranked by UpCity 2022
Ranked by Expertise 2023
Ranked by MASHABLE
Ranked by Business Journal
Ranked by Selected Firms
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Why Your Company's Web Design Matters
A strong online presence makes or breaks businesses.
There’s a simple truth to the modern market: A strong online presence makes or breaks businesses. This applies to small businesses as well as giant corporations, and it goes for your own business, too.
Why is that? Digital marketing has become practically synonymous with marketing at large. Sure, people still see billboards and TV ads and receive flyers. But modern search engines are the moving force behind the most effective marketing campaigns. More clients than ever are finding the products and services they’re looking for online, whether through computers or their smartphones.
This market situation is precisely why web designers are in high demand today – web design and web development have never been more important. Furthermore, every business requires a highly functional website, whether the company operates locally or globally. In other words, the same rules apply to your business in North Carolina, and Charlotte in particular, as to any other company in the world.
If you’re looking for a digital marketing agency to enhance your web design and implement top-notch digital marketing strategies, NEWMEDIA will be your ideal strategic partner. Before we look at what makes NEWMEDIA such an excellent company for web design, let’s discuss what web designers do and how this facet of digital marketing improves your business.
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Request a proposalWhat Is Web Design?
It’s been over three decades since the first website went online. Since then, website development and web design have become complex disciplines at the core of digital marketing. Yet not every business owner knows what constitutes website design nor what differentiates this crucial activity from other IT services like software development.
The confusion shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, web design includes elements of creative work, IT, and marketing while being closely tied to website development. The easiest way to describe the website design process would be as the craft of creating and organizing the visual elements of a website. Yet, the above definition doesn’t explain web design to the full extent. Besides being visually appealing, your website must also provide seamless functionality, enhance your digital marketing efforts, and strengthen your branding. Website design tackles all those aspects. Another fact about web design that you must know is that it’s absolutely critical to the success of your business, whether it functions as an e-commerce or follows a more traditional model.
Why does web design drive growth? Just look at the following image:
Yes, according to Top Design Firms, half of your potential customers will form an opinion about your brand based on web design. Assuming your website visitors are initially interested in your products or services, this could mean 50% more new customers – or 50% less. There’s no need to explain which one is better!
Let’s break down web design further and see how professional services in the field achieve the desired goals.
Common Web Design Tools
Two types of tools play a major role in the design process for a new website: website builders and design software. Website builders reveal their purpose in the very name: These services allow you to create a website using various visual and functional elements.
The main advantage of website builders is the comprehensive suite of design solutions they offer. Most popular tools of this type don’t require extensive experience or knowledge in coding. Platforms like Wix, GoDaddy, Squarespace, and Gator allow you to build a new website from scratch based primarily on visual elements.
Website builders are quite handy, especially for beginners. However, they lack the level of customization that customers look for from professional services. That’s where design software comes in.
This type of software is invaluable if you wish to create a new site with custom elements. Using Photoshop, Sketch, or Figma provides almost unlimited options in terms of design, although it will take an expert to utilize this software to the fullest. With the proper know-how and experience, web design professional services can create any element, convert it into code, and incorporate it into your website.
Key Principles of Web Design
Web design can be viewed as an art form and, like any other art, it needs to follow certain principles to be successful. Of course, we’re not talking about rules here. Instead, these are the best practices used to build revenue-generating websites that look and function great.
The first principle is balance, and it’s a bit complex to grasp. Balance means all of the elements are represented in equal measure, i.e., none overwhelms the others. However, this doesn’t mean every element should be the same size and color but rather that the entire page should be balanced. For instance, you could have several smaller elements grouped on one side and one larger element on the other.
Next, the principle of emphasis makes balance even more complicated. You’ll want some elements to stand out – your company logo or CTA button, for example – but you don’t want those elements to break the visual balance. This problem is often avoided by applying another principle: contrast, which consists of combining large and small shapes, contrasting colors, etc.
The three described principles can be considered as the main cornerstones of web design, but they’re not the only ones. Other key principles include hierarchy, unity, rhythm, movement, and white space.
The Difference Between Web Design and Web Development
Web design is instrumental in building websites, so it’s relatively common to mistake it for web development. Yet, these two related disciplines are quite distinct, both in their purposes and the techniques they use.
Web design focuses on what website users see and interact with. In other words, it deals with the visual and experiential sides of websites. Icons, banners, fonts, logos, and images all fall under the wide array of web design tools.
On the other hand, web development concerns everything that happens under the hood. This is the programming part of your website that makes it responsive, mobile-friendly, and fully functional. As the core of what makes websites operate correctly, web development takes a central role, as evident from this chart:
What you’re seeing is a report from Maximize Market Research, and it shows the projected trend in the programming language market. In particular, this market is predicted to double by the end of the decade, and much of that growth is due to web development.
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Book a free consultationQuality Web Design Measurably Improves Your Business Goals
Quality web design is much more than a matter of appearance. In fact, a well-designed, user-friendly site can be your greatest business asset. The math is simple here: a better website means more traffic, leading to more leads converting to more customers. The ultimate result? More money for your business, and there’s no company owner who doesn’t want to achieve just that.
Let’s look at how quality design can help you grow your business in Charlotte, NC.
Uplift Your Branding
Branding is the essential way in which your business communicates with potential clients. People can recognize a brand by its logo design, fonts, and even color schemes. This is true in traditional as well as digital marketing, which is precisely why branding represents a key benefit of web design.
Of course, there’s more to branding than putting your logo on the home page of your website. A competent web design team will tailor the look of your site to reflect the aesthetic choices that represent you company precisely how you want it represented.
Help Generate More Leads
Carefully designed websites do more than please the eye – they solve problems related to conversions and sales. The world of e-commerce has already grasped the impact that web design has on lead generation, and other businesses are catching up to that fact as well.
The matter is very simple here: Quality-designed websites attract leads, while poorly made ones make people click away. When you get web design of the highest quality, your company can benefit from improved search engine optimization (SEO), better engagement, and the overall development of your digital marketing strategy. In fact, a good design team – like the one you can work with at NEWMEDIA – can introduce new ideas to ensure your website design attracts even more clients.
Build a Professional Portfolio
If there’s one thing that paying customers value more than business marketing methods, it’s a showcase of the level of quality a business is offering. In that regard, a web design agency can create an ideal portfolio for your organization that creates a seamless and enjoyable digital experience.
Although the primary purpose of business websites is to convert, they can serve as ideal portfolio showcases. Your design team can put together a compelling testimonial page and, depending on your industry, display your actual products or services so that visitors immediately understand the value your business offers. Reviews and testimonials can have a massive impact on conversions, sales, and revenue. In this case, more is always better – just check out this graph:
The interesting bit about this statistic from Power Reviews is what the source tells us about the power of testimonials. Namely, testimonials can increase sales of more affordable products by 190% and up to 380% for pricier items. Naturally, this could represent a massive boost for growing companies as well as established businesses.
Grow Your Business by Reaching Your Target Audience
When it comes to businesses that have yet to create a loyal customer base, web design can help there, too. Quality design can make your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts much more accurate, helping you establish a web presence in the right circles – people interested in your offers.
How is this possible? Google and other search engines analyze numerous aspects of your website to index it and recommend it in search results. Of course, your content will do most of the heavy lifting here, as that will be the main method of appearing in relevant searches. But if the design is done right, your website will be ranked higher and more likely to show up at the top.
Eye-Catching Web Design
Branding and quality design are handy when building brand recognition. However, the aesthetic side isn’t to be disregarded either, as the visual appeal can play a major role in attracting and retaining clients. In fact, it’s not uncommon for businesses to thrive or fail simply due to their design choices. At the very least, the aesthetics of your site could make lead generation and conversion easier.
The choice of colors and fonts, size of the website elements, and placement of crucial buttons and forms can be equal parts attractive and extremely functional. Although functionality will partially be the job of the software development team, design will determine how well different features of your site are utilized.
Charlotte Web Design Team
Now that you’ve learned what web design can do for your business in general, we should discuss why NEWMEDIA is the right choice when deciding on a design agency. You won’t need to go far to find proof of the quality work that NEWMEDIA does – hundreds of satisfied clients and stellar reviews tell the tale already. NEWMEDIA has helped numerous brand types elevate themselves among the competition – from e-commerce shops to thought leaders.
If all this sounds great, you’re probably wondering about the particular advantages that NEWMEDIA offers.
Let's go over them now.
Advanced Digital Marketing
First and foremost, NEWMEDIA provides comprehensive and holistic marketing solutions. This means that, when it comes to web design, no aspect of marketing, including brand image, SEO, or others gets left behind. The NEWMEDIA team will implement cutting-edge ideas, providing design solutions that fit your marketing goals like a glove.
Web Development
While you might opt for NEWMEDIA primarily as a web design service, web and software development can also come in the package if needed. We’ve already talked about how development is the engine behind the design process, which is precisely why NEWMEDIA can offer both. Better yet, your business can get all of the solutions from one source without the need to employ several agencies simultaneously.
If you’re wondering how much the combination of design and development may affect your business, look at this image:
According to Zippia, over a third of potential clients won’t move forward with a company due to poor design or development choices. That’s a massive number of conversions that may be lost for your company or e-commerce shop forever. Quality website development can ensure this doesn’t happen, especially when combined with web design solutions by NEWMEDIA.
Customized Web Design
Imagine a situation where you create a website with all of the bells and whistles, only to discover the end product is identical to another company in North Carolina. Of course, this would be more than an inconvenience – people would likely mistake your business for the other one. As a result, you’d probably see fewer customers and your company would struggle to grow.
Luckily, NEWMEDIA offers customized web design solutions to make your website stand out. The expert design team can implement novel solutions and approach the project from a different angle, creating a website that’s truly your own. But novelty isn’t the only name of the game here – NEWMEDIA will make sure your website is unique while leaving a lasting positive impression on the visitors.
Website Design for Mobile Applications
Going mobile-friendly represents one of the unwritten rules for modern websites. Many websites fail to engage and convert simply due to clunky mobile implementation. In other words, your SEO may be spot-on, and your website could appear on the first page of Google all of the time. But the people searching for your business will quite possibly do so using their phones. And if they land on a nonresponsive page, they’ll move on.
With NEWMEDIA, you’ll get a design that fits mobile devices natively. The site will be created for seamless functionality on smartphones and tablets, immediately increasing your reach and even brand image. With mobile browsing becoming more and more prevalent, this functionality will prove crucial in the coming years.
Website Hosting
Having the perfect website for your purposes is possible with NEWMEDIA. But you can have the best site in the world, and it won’t amount to much without a hosting solution. Well, NEWMEDIA is there for that, too. Hosting services ensure your site goes – and stays – online. Naturally, the importance of this aspect doesn’t require much explanation since reliable hosting is what makes your site visible and functional.
Most importantly, your site will behave predictably and without a hitch. In other words, you won’t need to worry whether your server is down or if you’re missing out on conversions and engagement due to hosting issues. Let NEWMEDIA take care of this essential aspect and enjoy the complete service package from a tried-and-true industry professional.
Logo Design and Brand Development
We’ve already talked about branding and its massive marketing potential. And, although many businesses understand its value, quality branding isn’t easy to achieve. Here, NEWMEDIA can come in with a complete solution to enhance your brand image and make a website that represents it in full.
NEWMEDIA can design the ideal logo for your organization and use it as the starting point for further development. This includes a careful selection of colors, website elements, shapes, fonts, and other design choices. The result is a complete brand image that will solidify your company’s identity and make it instantly recognizable.
Local SEO
Previously, we talked about how customers who are looking for a lawn care service in Charlotte would type a term like “lawn care in Charlotte” into Google.
Here’s what the results of that search look like:
Do you notice the map and the three results that appear directly under it? Those are local search results pulled directly from each company’s Google Business Profile. More importantly, those three results appear above everything else that ranks for the term “lawn care in Charlotte.”
Why does this matter?
According to data from On The Map, 93% of people checked search engine results when looking for local businesses in 2020. Of these local searches, 42% led to a click in the Google Map Pack, which is the collection of three local results that appear above the rest of the local businesses Google ranks in its regular results.
If you’re not in the Google Map Pack, you’re missing out on a huge portion of online traffic. And if your business doesn’t appear in local search results at all, the 93% of people who look online before buying services in Charlotte won’t even know that you exist.
An SEO expert from NEWMEDIA helps your local business show up in these crucial local searches.
Keyword Research
On the surface, keyword research seems pretty simple. Figure out what people are likely to type when searching for what your business does and focus your content creation efforts on those words and phrases.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.
The top 10,000 keywords in the world only account for about 20% of clicks, as this chart from Blog Time Now demonstrates:
More importantly, 70% of all clicks from search engines come from long-tail keywords. These are longer phrases and questions that searchers type when they’re looking for local companies or have a specific question they want to answer.
Our point?
Targeting the top keywords in your niche isn’t the way to increase revenue. Figuring out the long-tail keywords is. At NEWMEDIA, our keyword research ensures our clients reach their target audiences by making sure they rank well for the long-tail keywords that people use to find their businesses.
Quality Content Optimization
Content that contains keywords is the lifeblood of search engine optimization. Google and its ilk examine your content to figure out what it says, who it’s speaking to, and where it should rank in search engines.
Knowing this, many businesses try to optimize content themselves.
Again, it seems so simple. Take a piece of content, get your list of keywords, and start stuffing those keywords into the writing.
The problem is that Google grew wise to that approach years ago. Today, over-optimized content gets subjected to penalties, which wreaks havoc on website traffic.
TechRound shows us how damaging those penalties can be in this chart:
This website dropped from nearly 10,000 visits per day to less than 1,000 because Google implemented a penalty that took it out of search results.
Optimizing content properly is harder than it seems. The NEWMEDIA SEO company knows how to do it properly, ensuring your content ranks higher without being at risk of penalties.
Content Strategy and Creation
Your conversion rate is a percentage figure that tells you how many of your site’s visitors do what you want them to do. A purchase is the most obvious conversion goal. But there are others, such as signing up for emails or a newsletter or simply getting in touch with your Charlotte company.
Whatever your idea of conversion is, it’s the ultimate goal of attracting traffic to your website. You want more than just the views. You want visitors to take the next step so you can start talking to them about the product you sell.
That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in.
CRO is all about making little tweaks to your website that encourage your visitors to take the action you want them to take. Our SEO company offers several CRO services, including:
- Building text-based CTAs into your content so your customers don’t have to scroll around looking for buttons to get in touch.
- Split testing different web page designs to see which works better.
- Using occasional popups to pull attention towards specific offers that may interest your visitors.
- Optimizing content that already performs well so it can reach an even wider audience.
Web Development and Design
All digital marketing efforts start with a website. The quality of that website plays a role in how well it ranks in search engine optimization.
Let’s start with the development side, which covers the nuts and bolts of how your website works. If your site has broken links and unclean code, a search engine’s spiders can’t crawl it as well as they need to. This means they can’t create accurate sitemaps. Plus, the broken links mean they’ll miss out on pages that would normally rank. Only the search engine can’t find them.
On the web design side, it’s all about the user experience.
Take a look at this chart from Zippia:
Note the last of the three reasons why somebody will leave a page. A huge 37% say that poor web design causes them to bounce away from a website, likely never to return.
Of course, that’s a problem from a conversion standpoint. You can’t convert a client who doesn’t stick around.
But having a lot of people bouncing away from your web pages also creates a search engine optimization problem. It shows search engines that people aren’t finding what they need from your page. And if they don’t get what they need, there’s no reason for a search engine to rank your website.
So, think of web development and web design as two sides of the same coin. Development handles the mechanics, while design deals with the look and feel of your site. NEWMEDIA can handle both, so you have a website that’s ready for the techniques our SEO company uses to give you a boost in rankings.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Your conversion rate is a percentage figure that tells you how many of your site’s visitors do what you want them to do. A purchase is the most obvious conversion goal. But there are others, such as signing up for emails or a newsletter or simply getting in touch with your Charlotte company.
Whatever your idea of conversion is, it’s the ultimate goal of attracting traffic to your website. You want more than just the views. You want visitors to take the next step so you can start talking to them about the product you sell.
That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in.
CRO is all about making little tweaks to your website that encourage your visitors to take the action you want them to take. Our SEO company offers several CRO services, including:
- Building text-based CTAs into your content so your customers don’t have to scroll around looking for buttons to get in touch.
- Split testing different web page designs to see which works better.
- Using occasional popups to pull attention towards specific offers that may interest your visitors.
- Optimizing content that already performs well so it can reach an even wider audience.
CRO isn’t about making wholesale changes to your website. It’s little tweaks in content or small changes to a site’s design that create a better flow from information gathering to converting.
How do you know if you need CRO?
Take a look at this chart from Trustmary:
Here we see the median conversion rates across different industries. For example, travel websites manage an average of 3.4%, which means 3.4 out of every 100 website visitors convert. Catering is even higher, with a 6.1% conversion rate.
If your rate for your industry is lower than the median figures in this chart, you need conversion rate optimization. And if you’re hitting the median figures, then congratulations. Now, you’re ready to be even better than average with the help of NEWMEDIA.
Search Engine Optimization
It’s no secret that Google is king when it comes to online marketing. The search engine draws from deep pools of existing websites and pages to recommend the optimal results upon each query. Naturally, this makes search engine optimization (SEO) pivotal in the marketing efforts of every business. More than merely help, web design will do wonders in that regard.
With NEWMEDIA, the design of your website complies with the leading practices, ensuring a leading position among search results. What does that mean? A lightweight but effective design that makes your site load in the blink of an eye and works seamlessly. Believe it or not, those few seconds of loading time make a world of difference.
Building Inbound Links
Backlinks have been a crucial part of search engine optimization since the advent of search engines. The concept is simple. A website links to your site because it believes that your site has something of value to offer to its visitors. The more links you get, the more search engines take notice. Their algorithms go, “Hmm, a lot of people are linking to this website. That must mean it’s a good site. Let’s rank it higher.”
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Once people picked up on how more backlinks tended to lead to better rankings, the floodgates opened. Directory sites, link farms, and all of these useless sites that existed solely for backlinks started popping up. Many websites used those sites to artificially inflate their rankings.
Then, Google struck back with penalties for bad backlinks.
Today, building inbound links is just as important as it ever was. But far more crucial than quantity is the quality of the links you get from other websites.
Quality is what NEWMEDIA offers.
Our inbound linking service isn’t about getting your website on as many directories and link farms as possible. That’s a recipe for a penalty. Instead, we focus on creating content that other websites want to link to because that content demonstrates that you’re an industry thought leader.
Sure, we make sure you have links where you’re supposed to have them.
If there’s an industry association that lends credibility to your business, we’ll make sure they’re linking to you.
But quality is key. After all, one good backlink from an authoritative source outweighs a thousand from low-quality websites.
Turn your website into a revenue driver with our expert design and marketing services.
Get my custom website quoteOur Past Projects
Our Esteemed Clientele
Delta Sky Club
The new Delta Sky Club website portal, designed and developed from scratch by NEWMEDIA, allows Delta passengers who go online in any of their Sky Club lounges across the U.S. to quickly get news, weather & stock market information, in addition to tracking flights on any airline (not just Delta!), searching directly in Google, and getting maps and driving directions to/from any address on Earth.
California Almonds
NEWMEDIA Los Angeles, in collaboration with Sterling-Rice Group (SRG), built a new website for the Almond Board of California under an aggressive development timeline. We built a multi-language website for them while ensuring a consistent user experience by bringing all four existing websites into a single universal system. Our team of experts delivered this mammoth project even after the deadline was shortened by four weeks.
Six Flags
The Six Flags team reached out to NEWMEDIA for a complete website redesign and multi-site ecommerce web development. We redesigned the website to change its complete look and feel and organized content into categories and subcategories to simplify content discovery for visitors. Over the course of the project, we worked in close coordination with the Six Flags team to deliver the website quickly before their parks reopened.
PostNet
PostNet approached us to completely redesign all their websites, including those of franchisees. We developed a fresh responsive website for them to offer a consistent browsing experience to visitors irrespective of the screen size of the device they use to access the website. Additionally, we developed a tool to help visitors find their nearest PostNet center. Finally, we designed the 300+ franchise websites for them with local SEO and franchise SEO.
YMCA (The Y)
YMCA (now “The Y”) is an organization that we’ve all heard of and/or been a part of at one time in our lives. YMCA of Metro Denver came to us for a fresh website design that would communicate their mission of being for youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility. Even more exciting, they had just had a brand refresh and this was the chance to support that refresh with a complementary website.
Haystack
When CBS Television was producing the show that came to be called Haystack Help, they needed a complex yet easy to use website application to direct the TV viewers to visit, and their search for a Denver website developer led them to NEWMEDIA. Initially, prior to contacting NEWMEDIA, they had selected another web development partner for the project. Then, there was a problem…
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Master Major Search Engines with NEWMEDIA
Once you have your SEO strategy in place, there’s so much more we can do for you. Google AdWords. Email marketing. Social media management. It all falls under the NEWMEDIA digital marketing umbrella.
But there’s one more question to answer: Why us?
Let NEWMEDIA Become Your Charlotte Web Design Solution
Our Recognitions Speak for Themselves
Upcity
Clutch
Mashable
The Inc. 5000
Recognized Throughout the U.S.
NEWMEDIA receives awards for the quality of its work. In 2019, UpCity ranked us in the top 1% of digital marketing agencies in the United States. Clutch called us a global leader among B2B companies in the same year. And the Inc. 5000 named us one of the country’s fastest-growing companies for two consecutive years.
We Work with Major Brands
Amtrak, PostNet International, and CBS Television are among the many major brands that trust NEWMEDIA with web design and search engine optimization. We understand how to build businesses using the digital space.
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Call us at (980) 392-5640 or come visit our office at 222 S. Church Street, Suite 100, Charlotte, NC and let’s get started.